The Golden Power
by DBAinsw
Summary: [TP]The Golden Power is omnipotent and omniscient. Its true nature is beyond mortal ken, but only mortals can decide how it is used. Any third of it could dominate the planet, but only all three together can save it. A tale of Royalty, Gods, and a Hero.
1. Chosen of the Gods

**Second Full Revision Notes:** I re-re-standardized chapter formatting to make it consistent through book 1 and 2. I re-edited everything to reflect plot decisions made years after the first few chapters were written, although this didn't involve any particular amount of retroactive continuity changes. I finally got around to fixing dozens of tiny mistakes, although I can't guarantee ffnet's interpretation of my word processor's formatting language won't randomly remove spaces around italicized text, among other small eccentricities. Finally, I removed large sections of author's notes detailing previews for new chapters and future plans and replaced them with personal commentary on the respective chapters, at least where these comments did not already exist. In other words, if you haven't reread the story recently, now is a good chance to get caught up in time for the conclusion to book 2.

**If you have never read this story before, the chapter-end notes sections may spoil the plot somewhat, so skip them if you care about that sort of thing.**

**First Full Revision Notes**: **(outdated) **I re-standardized chapter formatting and renumbered the chapters to divide them into parts, reflecting the lengthened story plan. I also made some minor alterations, including renaming Reanalds Jr. and the Prince of Ghent, as well as quite a bit of spot-revision. Almost certainly, this is not the only revision notes entry I'll ever have to make.

**Original Forward:**

I hope you all like this. I think you'll find my writing style pretty word-heavy, but I can assure you that I have a plot that's going places. Give it a chance. Events are post Twilight Princess, which is property of Nintendo. I've taken liberties with explaining the political situation before and after Zant seized control of Hyrule and imprisoned Zelda, so read carefully.

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 1: Chosen of the Gods**

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

"Your Majesty, this week's reports from the borders have arrived." The aged minister in his fine robes set a stack of sealed envelopes on the corner of Zelda's desk. He waited quietly for some acknowledgment from his monarch, and at length was dismissed with a wave. If he had a problem with his brief treatment, he wisely kept it to himself. None of the old ministers had taken well to the way Princess Zelda had asserted her authority so suddenly after the mysterious incident of two months past, but those who had protested her new-found enthusiasm for running the state she had inherited from her father quickly found themselves without a job. The smart ones had buttoned up and let her claim the burden of power from them without question, if not without grumbling.

Zelda was left alone with the rows and piles of paperwork arrayed around her as the wind blew gently into her study through the open doors of her balcony. The wind played through her long hair in its regal braids, and rustled the silken expanses of her official gown. It took an hour every morning with a team of three servants to achieve the look, but the effect it had on people was perfectly worth the effort. And then as small a thing as opening the windows added an effect you couldn't buy.

Out below her windows, Hyrule Castle and the town around it nestled in the verdant valley carved by Nayrue's River. The Reanalds' Hyrulian estate was built on the highest canyon cliff of the brief foothills between Castle Town and the Faron Forest. The view allowed her to survey her domain and to watch the constant progress on the castle's repairs, and was a feature of her current lodgings that the princess appreciated… perhaps the only one.

"Ah, Princess Zelda, if I might have a moment of your time?" a new voice called at Zelda's open door, and her pen stopped its progress at the missive she'd been writing. It was an effort not to wince as she set it aside and turned to face the invading enemy forces, as she couldn't help but consider the young Lord Reanalds Jr.

"You've taken one every other day this week, David," the Princess allowed herself a quiet rebellion against the necessities of this barely tolerable living situation, and as she suspected, the revolution went entirely unnoticed. To call David Reanalds stupid was to give him too much credit.

"It is my family's great pleasure to host her majesty's presence in our humble abode while the palace is being rebuilt." The young man was tall, athletic, and had a jaw you could crack nuts on. But, even as he spoke his kind, empty words, Zelda could hear his insufferable mother forcing him to memorize them. They had that subtle ring of uncertainty he never managed to lose when he was reciting from a script.

That he had missed her not-so subtle annoyance so completely was a testament to how poor a student of his mother's he truly was, and that knowledge made the young fool marginally tolerable in her eyes. She knew the manipulative old cow wanted nothing more than to worm her way into the royal family's good graces, unless it was to have her son marry into it directly, and her efforts were becoming intolerable. There was a throat-clearing sound, and Zelda looked up to see David waiting patiently with his simple smile. With a huff, she silently berated herself for taking out her problems with Lady Reanalds on the woman's unwitting accomplice.

"It is _my_ great pleasure to be here, David," Zelda lied politically, "It was… _kind_ of your family to take on the burden of hosting the royal presence during these trying times."

"Think nothing of it," he said, nearly glowing with pride at even that simple compliment. Zelda, meanwhile, could think of a hundred places she'd rather be than cooped up in the country villa of a stuffy old landlord like David Reanalds Senior, the current Earl of Ordonia. Politics, as usual, stepped in to complicate simple matters, and the young monarch found herself forced to play to her landed nobility's vanity as a show of national solidarity. There were times when she almost wished she were a captive of Zant or Gannondorf again, if only to escape from the mewling of courtiers and the mask-like smiles of people who could recite their exact lineages to at least ten generations.

"My Lady," the lordling went on again in his careful, practiced tone, as Zelda's mind continued to dwell on her upsetting circumstances, "it would bring myself and my esteemed family the highest honor if your majesty would deign to grace our upcoming garden party with her regal presence."

"Oh? Really?" Zelda said, before she could stop herself, and earned a look of confusion from her host. She cursed her annoyance-loosened tongue immediately; not even a simpleton like David would miss some extremes of rudeness. "That is to say, I have been very busy with matters of state, ever since the May incident was resolved."

'The May Incident,' as the quiet little war between Hyrule's various children of prophecy had been so artfully dubbed, was mostly a complete mystery to the general public. The number of people who knew any detail of Zelda's coerced surrender to Zant could be numbered on two hands, satisfied as the madman had been to work his puppet kingdom through figureheads and agents while his foul twilight magics discreetly corrupted the land. His spells had reduced all of Hyrule's people to shadow spirits without them ever being any the wiser.

As far as the average Hylian on the street was concerned, Hyrule Castle had been leveled during a failed, month-long test of the orange barrier shield that had cut off communications with the castle for the duration. None _needed_ to know that a mad sorcerer embodying the sacred golden force of Power had seized complete control of the monarchy, and so not a soul was told. Whisperings from the multitude of staff that had been driven from the castle after Zant's coup were quickly silenced with rupees and stern warnings from the guards. Carefully chosen counter-rumors were spread to cast doubt on whatever rumors of the truth leaked out despite these efforts to silence witnesses, and so of the five or six conspiracy theories that competed for popularity in explaining the May Incident, only the least popular one was anywhere near the truth. As work began on reconstructing the largely ruined seat of Hyrule's dynastic leaders, life went on everywhere else more or less as it always had. And so the people were blissful in their ignorance.

"Ah, yes…" David was slightly downcast at her oblique evasion of the question, "So I should tell mother that you will _not_ be attending then?" Zelda thought fast, weighing the satisfaction of snubbing the old bag against any public perception of trouble that might arise should she continue to dodge social functions. As had been happening more and more often lately, she felt a flash of insight that gave her the answer. Weirdness had ruled the land for months, and it was her responsibility as monarch to lead the public back to a sense of business as usual.

"No, no, not at all…" Zelda fought to keep a straight face as she said, "I would be happy to attend. Please do have it cleared with my valet, arrangements will have to be made."

"Excellent!" the someday-Earl of Ordonia barely restrained himself from a giddy little dance, and Zelda heroically contained the urge to wince. "Mother will be overjoyed! I shall personally see that it is an afternoon to remember!"

As soon as the pretty pest was out of her hair, Zelda turned back and finished drafting her missive, earmarking it for her secretary to send to the scribes. It touched on many issues, but was in largest part instructions to the captain of Castle Town's guard force to cooperate with the new military minister on the effort to step up recruitment and training. The goddesses knew those men needed help, after the way they'd gone to seed in recent years.

Even now, a full two months since the dust of the castle had settled and the twilight mirror had been shattered, gangs of moblins and lizardmen still terrorized the trade routes and prowled in the untamed countryside. Trade had been suffering badly for nearly half a year, and it was no longer enough to simply keep the area inside the walls clear of such unreasonable and violent elements. It was not inherent to her nature to greet violence with violence, but that same insight that had been working in her favor of late told her that a refinement of their military was virtually her highest priority.

The country had not been in such a state of chaos since her grandfather's earliest days, as Lord Reanald was fond of harping upon at the family dinners she had no excuse to avoid. Opportunistic nobles saw current troubles as an excuse to grab power from the monarchy, and such was not a situation the young princess could tolerate. She could hardly count on them to manage their provinces fairly as it was, by and large, and Zelda shuddered to think of what greedy men, both inside and outside of the borders, might still do to her wounded nation.

Shaking such dark thoughts from her mind, Zelda gave an apprehensive glance toward the pile of reports that had come in today. The communications lag between here and any given border was such that even these courier-delivered messages were days old, and she could barely contain her dread of some of the boring minutiae her inexperienced observers felt the need to include in their letters. Still, her instinct was to devour the information. Comprehensive intelligence on world affairs was often the difference between a good decision and a poor one, and so the reports were a necessary evil.

As she pored though them, Zelda's mind was left with quite a bit of surplus capacity. Some of it analyzed the data she was so voraciously memorizing, but still more was left over. With no immediate purpose, it wandered slowly to simpler, more exciting times. Affairs of state like these seemed a pale burden of leadership in comparison to the dreadful choices forced upon her by Zant and the fearful struggle with the fiend Gannondorf. Though she had spent much of that time a prisoner of one sort or another, those hard decisions had tempered her mind in a way her life previous to them had never before approached. After placing her very life between evil and the safety of her kingdom, the effort of managing a bureaucracy and dealing with a court of fools and users was almost a joke. It was why she'd suddenly chosen to take on so many more of her royal responsibilities. She was the Princess, soon to be crowned Queen, and this life was as much her fate as had been meeting the Hero Chosen by the Gods and fending off evil in its purest form.

At length, one report caught her eye, drawing every ounce of her concentration, mostly because it detailed suspicious troop movements along their western border. In the far shadow of the natural wall formed by Death Mountain, the Principality of Ghent was supposedly holding wargames to keep their famous armies sharp. It was innocent enough on the surface, but Zelda felt her suspicions rouse none the less, her instinct whispering to her a grim theory. It was true that the Ghentese had to deal with the trolls as much as the Hylians had to deal with moblins, but that was no excuse for mobilizing so much cavalry on a border that had been disputed for hundreds of years. For the moment, it was just one more concern to add to her laundry-list of worries, but it had the potential to mean so much more.

Prince Philip of Ghent was not a stupid man, and doubtless news of Hyrule's troubles had reached his ears as much as it would any other neighboring state's leaders. Any one of them might take the opportunity to gobble up a bit of Hyrule while their guard was down, and this seemed to be the first indication of the scavengers moving in for a nibble at her nation's sovereign territory. It was a sobering thought, and Zelda dwelt on it and others as she watched the shadows grow longer in her study.

For no particular reason at all, a portion of her mind wandered to a certain young man with hard, unyielding eyes the color of clear skies. She couldn't help but wonder for a moment whether or not his life had settled back into calm simplicity as quickly as hers had returned to the litany of worries that was the weight of the crown. In her playful imagination, he was astride that fine mare of his, riding across farmlands in his hero's greens, going about whatever business that a goat wrangler got up to.

Zelda was intelligent enough to realize she was no-doubt romanticizing a life of hard labor, but it was such an utterly enchanting mental image that she allowed herself the moment's indulgence. On another level entirely, she was angry at herself for engaging in such foolishness and for her ignorance of such a simple thing as what goat wranglers actually do. The cocktail of opposing threads of thought and motivations was disorienting, and Zelda was quickly forced to clear her mind completely or face a terrible headache.

With a meditative technique that any sorceress needed to learn, she emptied her mind, and then quickly picked up with matters of state where she'd left off. Rather regretfully, she called for a page to fetch her military and foreign policy ministers for a meeting. Hers was not a life of goat-wrangling, and nothing reminded her of that more quickly than the fact that people would live and die based on the quality of her decisions. Best to make them good ones.

**Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

Link kicked back in the soft grass, the afternoon sun shining lazily down on him as he half-dozed on an isolated bank of the little stream that ran through the village. One hand helped to prop up his fishing rod as the other plucked listlessly at a few reeds, and every now and then he'd find a choice one and put it to his lips to chew on for a while. He was wearing his work clothes, which were filthy-dirty from a long, long morning's job at the ranch, but was hardly as tired as he might have been _before_ after the same amount of work. Like most things in his life, the measure of an honest day's work was divided firmly into the before and after, with the divider being his time as the Hero Chosen by the Gods.

Rather predictably, he smiled when he considered that grandiose title. Not even hearing four immortal guardian spirits and his sovereign monarch herself call him that had truly made it sink in, and now it was already over and done with. His epic journey was closed and over for good, and no one would even ever _truly_ know about it. Except… except for the one who had lived it with him, of course. But, Midna was gone, forever.

As he often did when he thought no one was looking, Link pulled at a cord he wore around his neck, freeing a small object from concealment in his shirt. It was a tiny, lusterless fragment of thick glass, the largest shard of the twilight mirror he'd been able to find in the sandy mess of the Arbiter Grounds. A voice of caution had told him it was unwise to keep such a volatile, corrupting piece of magical artifact on his person, but the fact that it had lost is mystic glow quite completely compelled his sentimental side to overrule that voice. In essence, it was all he had to remember his ally and traveling companion. That made it a truly valuable memento.

With a shake of his head, he chastised himself again as he watched the clouds roll by. That strange, exciting, terrifying chapter of his life was closed, for good. Now, every day, he could look forward to the thrill of chasing smelly goats around a pasture and the constant, edge-of-the-saddle excitement that was a random bull charger taking a shot for the gates. It was… a definite change up from what he'd grown accustomed to: the chaos of combat, the peril of raiding ancient holy grounds, and the near-constant threat of mortal danger. Looking at it all now, ranching was _easy_. That made it hard to take seriously, which lead him to his recent penchant for slacking.

It was just so hard to keep his head in the work, and even now as he skived off by this peaceful, babbling brook, it was all he could do to combat the restlessness in his heart. Ever since he'd returned to Ordon and began to settle back into the daily routine of the 'before,' every day of his life had become a constant combat with a truly oppressive feeling. It was the unavoidable sensation that he was disconnected from himself. He'd gone off into the world and grown by leaps and bounds in every way as he fought to protect all the people and ideals he valued. Now, he'd come home and found the spot he'd left behind required only a much smaller person to fill it. The result was a terrible sense that he didn't belong in his own home, and that was probably the biggest reason he was so much less reliable around the ranch.

"LINK!" a cranky, cantankerous voice echoed across the fields, interrupting his dour thoughts. The young man knew that he'd finally been missed. "LINK! Where in blazes are you boy? Get your truant butt out here before I really lose my temper! It's _past_ time for the afternoon round-up!"

Immediately, Link sat up and jerked his fishing line out of the water. They day's catch, which had been keeping chill on a cord dipped into the stream, was pulled up in turn and tied to his rod, and he was dashing through the underbrush and concealing trees of his little secret-cove the next moment. He met up with Epona where he'd left her to graze, and moments later he was cantering into the center of the village.

Ordon was alive with activity at this hour, and Link idly checked up on his extended family as he rode into town. He got a wave from Talo, who had been press-ganged into helping his old man put up a cuckoo coop. Rusl and his boy were sparring on one of the piers, the sight of bruises patterning Colin's arms bringing back stinging memories of his own training in the basics of swordsmanship. Beth was halfway through weaving an enormous basket with Uli, Sera, Pergie, and Uli's darling little baby, Ilia conspicuously absent from the congregation of ladies. Next up down the lane was the boss himself, and boy did the old man look steamed.

"For my life, I cannot understand what has gotten into you Link!" Mayor Bo shouted in his grumpy way as Link and Epona sauntered by. "Now you get out and line up those goats before I tan your hide, boy! Don't think I can't still whoop you! Anyway, if you're late to work one more time, its coming out of your wages!"

The last was shouted at his back as he urged Epona into a slow gallop and headed up the trail into the ranch. Even as he heard it, the threat rang hollow. Everyone in town knew about the chest full of rupees he'd brought back with him from his travels, and rumors of its size were gossip from here to the other side of the valley. What he was quite sure none of them knew about were the twenty five orange rupees buried under his tree house's roots, a fortune roughly equivalent to three good harvests combined. If only he could think of something to do with it, he'd be all set. For certain he wasn't going to retire, not when working twelve hour days of this simple, menial labor was leaving him so stir-crazy with extra energy that he actually resorted to _fishing_ to calm his nerves.

His brooding was interrupted when he reached the ranch proper, and with an idle nod to Fado, Link kicked Epona into a full gallop. For a while, he could abandon himself to the joy of speed, the unmitigated rush of becoming a unit with his partner, Epona, and racing the wind in the vast spaces of the corral. When he was riding like this, he felt complete, like he was connected to the well of potential within him that languished unused during the rest of his chores. Riding was the thing he lived for, or one of them, anyway. It let him speed away from his confused heart.

Goats bolted and scattered as he whooped and hollered like a wild beast, but there was a precise method to the seeming chaos as Link abused the herd mentality to drive them all to the barn. The round up in the first corral took mere minutes, and as Fado hurried to shift fences around, the two of them moved on to the next herd.

One crazy, unprecedented hour later, nearly all six hundred head of goat were milling about in their overnight stalls. About halfway through the record-breaking display, the ranch hands from the next village over, who normally stuck to managing the far pastures, had gathered to gape in awe at Link's display of horsemanship as he worked up a storm. Everything just seemed to click into place, every hoot chased the goat the right direction, and not even Fado's normal level of bungling could slow down the one-man show Link had become.

When the last goat, a nasty old patriarch they called blacktooth, tried his daily gate-busting run, Link didn't even hesitate. He urged an exhausted Epona up next to the six-hundred pound beast and leaped wholesale onto its back. Gripping its horns, he rode out is wild bucking and twisted its head until it lost its balance, driving the cantankerous beast into the ground. When it stopped, he kept going, landing in the heavily-grazed pasture in a soft roll. Against all odds, he came right back up to his feet without a single speck of dung on his person. When the blood stopped thundering in his ears, Link could hear a dozen voices raised in unrestrained cheering.

Link stood stock still as he listened to the cheers draw closer, the whole world seeming oddly distant. For a moment, he'd recaptured the spark of evolved awareness that was the wake of mortal combat, life and death teetering on a blade's edge of physical conditioning and personal skill. In that brief flash of insight, he was whole again, utterly in touch with the whole of his self for the first time since he'd stored away his armored hero's garb. For just a moment, he recognized exactly what he'd lost, exactly _all_ the things he'd lost, and the pendant hung heavily around his neck. The wan shadow of near-death exhilaration faded the next moment, when Epona nudged him with her sweaty muzzle.

"Sorry girl, I know I worked you pretty hard," Link said, the first words he'd spoken all day long. But, then the cheering crowd was upon him, and he had to weather a storm of back-patting and hand shaking. He did what he could to be jovial with the boys, for old time's sake, but like most things lately, his heart wasn't in it. He deftly eluded numerous drinking invitations and cuffed Fado around the shoulder. He had to be jerked out of his unabashed enjoyment of Link's reflected glory. With hours of milking and the evening inspection still to go, Link found he was looking forward to his day off.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda looked up at the two people sitting across from her, and nodded to the page at the door, who promptly shut them in. The guards outside would ensure privacy for this, a meeting of Hyrule's top ruling officials. Zelda had no choice but to think of it that way, so that she had less trouble accepting that the aging historian and Spartan woman in front of her were all she had to rely on to help make decisions that could cost lives. Of course, their competence was as unquestionable as their loyalty, which had been proven in blood. They had impressed her so much that she'd been compelled to replace their predecessors, who had proven quite useless during the May Incident. Zelda reminded herself of all this and drove further concerns from her mind.

"I know you're both reading the same reports I am," Zelda began the meeting without formalities. "Auru, Ashei, I want to know your opinion of the situation with Ghent."

"The troop mobilization is a transparent ruse; a farce! The bastards'll be on our backs within the month!" Ashei snapped, her braids twirling and rattling against her armor as her pale skin flushed with emotion. Hyrule's newly appointed military minister was the daughter of Zelda's father's own military advisor, and perhaps Hyrule's last trained strategist and tactician. Years of peace had softened their country, and these days Zelda was regretting every military cutback her father had ever authorized, and that the regency ministers had left uncorrected.

"Err…" the young hothead seemed to remember her station suddenly, and appended, "Begging your majesty's pardon." Zelda forgave Ashei her outburst with a smile, noting that the woman's trained opinion echoed her own fears. Then she turned to her foreign policy adviser.

"Auru?" The dark-skinned, aged man had also served the same role in her father's court for a time, back before Zelda was born, and was knowledgeable in most forms of diplomacy and around as many languages as Zelda herself had been forced to learn. Added to that was a weight of experience that she could not hope to match, and which she leaned upon regularly.

"I met Prince Philip once, during a tour of the continent I made many years ago." Auru framed his opinion as a story, as was his habit, and Zelda ignored the urge to grit her teeth in annoyance as she concentrated on absorbing his experience. "He cares mostly for the safety of his people. He did not strike me as the type of man who would lead his nation into warfare without a much stronger cause than dusty old border disputes. For the time being, I recommend a diplomatic mission. Certainly there must be a reasonable explanation for whatever he's up to, though I must admit this evidence is rather damning. Still, inquires must be made."

"Hah, and I suppose you'll want us all to bend over and take whatever those horse-loving bastards feel like throwing at us without even putting up a fight, eh?" Ashei stated boldly as she rolled her eyes. "Sending a diplomatic mission into a situation like that, we might as well be sending goats to the slaughterhouse. At _best_, they would be lied to or sent away."

"And what would _you_ suggest?" Auru gave a look that doubtless made his grandchildren cower, "send some of our ill-trained, poorly-equipped soldiers down to the border to counter-demonstrate, escalating the situation? It would be a fool's errand."

"That's a good point," Zelda's calm, almost cheerful interjection diffused the argument easily, "Ashei, are our standing troops even _ready_ to fend off an invasion, should such a situation arise? I must admit, they have done little to impress me with their quality of late." Ashei had the decency to blush as her department came under royal scrutiny. After all, no one knew better just how ill-prepared Hyrule's defense forces were than the woman who'd been handed the monumental task of whipping them into shape.

"Well, your majesty, I'm certain I can beat the lazy arseholes into something resembling an army, given enough time." She looked gravely down at the map spread across Zelda's desk before continuing, "But, from the looks of these troop movements, time just isn't on our side. I'm afraid your late father left little for me to work with, the way things went to hell after my father's forced retirement."

"Yes, your father was one of this nations great treasures," Zelda said, the words tumbling from her lips as her instinct took command of her mouth. They truly seemed to startle her general with their undisguised honesty. "I only ever knew him as small child, but even then I could tell he was Hyrule's shield. Now, _you_ are Hyrule's shield Ashei. Tell me what I have to do to defend our home."

Both Ashei and Auru looked utterly moved, and Zelda made no show of how little of her conscious will had gone into the words. They expressed what she truly felt, but it was as though her desire to praise and motivate her people had gone directly from her heart to her mouth without ever stopping in her brain. Words that touched the hearts of others had always come easily to her, but the effect was increasing now, one of many oddities she'd experienced since the May Incident. She had little time to examine it, but however it came to be, it worked.

"Heh, I don't know what to say about that, your majesty," Ashei fumbled for words as her one-track military mind wrapped itself around the problem at hand. "I guess… I can only wish I had someone like… well, no, that's just wishful thinking."

"None the less, you might as well tell us," Zelda half-commanded with her suggestion. Ashei worked at the knuckles of her armored gauntlets with her teeth for a moment in a nervous gesture, and then nodded.

"I was just wishing I had even a few men with even a shred of the ability of that young man from Ordonia. I think you know the one I'm talking about, your majesty. That man had more grit in his small finger than the entire guard force of Castle Town combined. If I had a few hands even _nearly_ that experienced, oh what I could do!"

"Oh yes," Zelda said immediately, "you're referring to the Hero Chosen by the Gods." The instant she said it, both of her advisers nearly jumped out of their seats in surprise. Auru and Ashei looked at one another, then back to their princess, confusion on their faces. "I fear a man of his quality is going to be quite hard to come by, Ashei."

"Link was… _the_ _H__ero_?" Ashei asked, rather dumbly. She'd known he was a marvel of a warrior, but to hear her own gods-appointed monarch claim he was the hero of countless legends shook her to the core. Her father had raised her on the ballads and poems sung of the many heroes of the past, and to think for a moment that she had met and worked with one of them without ever knowing it just blew her mind. Doubtless Auru had his own shock to deal with as well, but the princess simply waved their surprise away. They were tracing over ground she'd already contemplated several times herself, and she'd have loved for the subject to have never come up.

"Link rose to the call of the goddesses and stood with me to defeat the evil that threatened to eradicate Hyrule, as was our destiny." Zelda's advisers' eyes widened as she made small talk out of prophecy and the will of the goddesses. "That he made no detailed mention of it simply proves that modesty is one of his virtues. Now, about this powder keg on the Ghentese border?"

"Your majesty, if Link is truly the hero of legend, why not put him to work defending Hyrule?" Ashei asked, the moment she was able to articulate the obvious solution to their shortage of competent manpower. "Can you imagine what he'd be able to do? Why—"

"Ashei, stop right there." Zelda's face creased with a deep emotion, and her advisers looked on in concern at the change in their usually nonplussed leader. Zelda herself hardly understood her own passion on the subject, though that didn't slow her explanation in the slightest. "Don't think I haven't considered what you're saying, because I've thought on that very subject long and hard. Link, in his service as the Hero, has sacrificed more for Hyrule than any other living person. When I think of the horrors he faced… of the things he had to give up…" In her mind's eye, Zelda saw the expression on Link's face when Midna shattered the twilight mirror and vanished forever from the light world, "I cannot bare the thought of calling on him again. He has given so much, and yet, he is not _capable_ of refusing the call to give more. It is our responsibility not to make that call. The hero is living his life now. He earned as much, and far more."

"But…" Ashei was torn between the urge to argue sense into her monarch and awe at the depth of conviction she seemed to show on the subject. In the end, her protest died on her lips. "Yes, your majesty."

"Very good," Zelda waved away the whole subject and brought the meeting to a close with brusque orders for the two ministers to draw up plans for a mission to Ghent, either military or diplomatic, and have them ready for her review.

Outside Zelda's office, Ashei was still in a sort of amazed reverie. Before that meeting, her conversations with the princess had been brief, her exposure to the monarch she'd long ago pledged to guard quite limited. To feel the full force of her charisma, to understand the mind behind those gorgeous, doll-perfect eyes, could only be summed up in a single word. "Wow," she whispered, using a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Yes," Auru said, smiling at his young compatriot, "I had forgotten that you hadn't had a personal, face-to-face meeting with her yet. She has that effect on everyone. It makes you proud to be a Hylian. Although… of late, the effect has been… _greater_…" He looked contemplative, but did not elaborate.

"Now, I believe I finally understand my father's commitment to the royal family," Ashei admitted, as the two of them began to walk the shadowy halls of Reanalds Mansion. "I only wish she would have agreed to let us at least contact Link. Link!" she nearly laughed the name as she recalled the shocking news, "to imagine that lad was the _Hero_. I think, on some level, I always knew. He had… the eyes of a fearless beast."

"Yes, about that," Auru said, stroking his chin as he escorted Hyrule's young general, "I believe I will draft the letter to him myself. Good fortune that he lives in the same village as old Rusl: I have his messenger falcon in my study at this very moment, waiting to take back my chess move for our latest long-distance match. I believe I will ask Rusl to speak on our behalf as well. Doubtless his words hold some weight with the young man."

"Wait… what?" Ashei asked, not sure she was hearing the older minister correctly. "But the princess… our _monarch_… just gave us exactly the opposite orders!"

"My dear, allow me to give you advice from an old hand in the business of advising powerful people." Auru turned and gave her a knowledgeable, almost laughing smile. "Part of our job is obvious: to grant experience and expertise our leader can use to make better choices. Part of the job is to take on delegated tasks. Yet another part is less well known—to share guilt in the bad choices the leader will inevitably make, so she does not bury herself in the pain of such enormous responsibilities." He paused, indicating that he was finally reaching his main point.

"The final part is the least well understood and the most often abused: a good adviser must know when his leader is wrong and act accordingly. Something… something is blocking her majesty's good judgment in this. At the very least, there is no harm in simply _asking_ for Master Link's continuing aid. No man is _incapable_ of refusing a task he truly does not wish to do—many are merely too great to ignore a task that needs doing. It is not the same thing, no matter what Her Majesty might say."

His explanation at an end, Auru fell to silence. That silence lasted until it was time for them to part ways. At the door to Ashei's room, she caught his arm and gave him a thoughtful look.

"I'll think about your words, old man," she said honestly, "but you're still defying the princess. On _your_ head be the consequences."

He nodded, accepting them gladly. If his hunch about the source of the princess's burgeoning ability was correct, both she and the Hero would be vital to securing Hyrule's future. After all, the Sacred Golden Power was Hyrule's greatest secret treasure, why shouldn't it go to work keeping the nation safe and strong?

**Second Full Revision Notes**:

This whole story began as an experiment in fantasy writing that I took up mostly to fill empty time during a mind-numbingly boring desk job internship I worked during summers away from university. I had had some success with over-the-top, suspense/melodrama with my Teen Titans fanficiton before, and wanted to try for something more serious and coherent than that overproduced (but quite fun) farce. In terms of beloved Nintendo properties, which provided iconic characters without the burden of highly structured characterizations and back-stories, Legend of Zelda was the obvious choice. I had just beaten Twilight Princess a few months before and felt that it left room for a much more violent, gritty approach to the post-Gannon activities that these cinematically powerful super-people might have to face. So, in an effort to be unique, I took as many absurd features from the game series I could think of and played them 100 percent straight, rather than trying to mitigate them for novelization, and this story was the product. This first chapter was mostly an attempt to establish the theme of people dealing with the ongoing development extraordinary, inhuman powers—the theme that would pervade the rest of the series. Of course, I also had to begin to establish the conflicts that would define the plot arc of book 1.


	2. A Big Fish

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 2: A Big Fish**

**Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

Ilia watched from her high, hidden vantage point as Link stepped out onto his front porch. One might wonder why she was hiding in the brush of the craggy rocks across from his house, rather than just walking up to meet him face to face. That question answered itself pretty quickly.

Link greeted the morning of his day off with a yawn as he gnawed at a bit of whatever he'd cobbled together for breakfast. Despite the fact that it was hours past dawn, it was pretty clear that he'd only just woken up, the biggest clue being the torn up leggings and raggedy old shirt he used as nightclothes. He glanced around, and, apparently satisfied that nobody would bother him, he stepped back into his tree house. The next moment, he came back out with a roll of cloth over his shoulder and flipped agilely down to the ground. He was wearing nothing but his loincloth and a tired smile.

Ilia took in the magnificent view with a barely-suppressed sigh. Her heart began to skip more quickly in her chest as he lay out the roll of heavy canvas across his peaceful lawn like a picnic blanket and took up station in the middle. To her growing excitement, Link began his private work out with light calisthenics; jogging in place, jumping jacks, and about a minute of shadow-boxing. His body soon gleamed in the bright sun as he warmed up, and Ilia began to chew on her lip as he moved on to his stretches. _That_ was a sight to make any girl melt, and she still couldn't believe her luck to have discovered it at all.

Ever since he'd brought them all home on Telma's cart, Link had been quiet and moody to a fault. Certainly he'd made an effort to be friendly and fun, especially with the younglings, but anyone who knew him could tell there was a strain there. It worried Ilia to see her childhood friend troubled so, but no verbal prodding made the slightest headway. That was why, when he'd changed his day off to a shift when everyone else would be sure to have work, Ilia had resolved to find out what he was up to with all that private time. She'd quietly changed her own day off to match his—a move that caught her father's attention in all the wrong ways—and spent most of the first morning picking hand-holds out of the Cliffside near Fado's house. Eventually she'd managed to achieve her hidden vantage point, but what she spied on Link's side of the precipice was like nothing she'd expected or feared.

Link used his day off to… well… to _work_ _out_. You really can't understand just how odd that is until you consider that life on a working farm is more exercise by itself than five days a week with deadweights and barbells. That he spent his day off in an exercise regime—a tougher regime that Ilia herself could have imagined in her worst nightmares—made _absolutely_ no sense.

That was what her mind had been saying on the first day, while her eyes and libido went an entirely different direction. She didn't even realize how worked up the sight had gotten her until Link walked off for a douse in the stream. She'd tried to stand up, only to fall flat on her butt immediately. Her legs were too weak to hold her up, and she nearly panicked during the long minutes it took her to manage her first wobbling steps. The cocktail of embarrassment and excitement was too much for her, and she'd spent the rest of the day hiding in her room. At least, for _some_ reason, she spent the rest of the day in her room.

All that week, Ilia had been unable to meet Link's eye. Every time she even got near him, all she could think of was what he looked like all sweating and perfect. He didn't hulk or bulge, but his muscles gathered in perfect proportion to his wiry frame, more like an artist's idealized statue than a back country ranch hand.

Now that she'd seen him going full-bore, she could tell how much he held back when other people were around, and the difference staggered her. He was a sharpened blade, or maybe a wild and ferocious beast, and yet he put on his tatty old clothes and walked among the rest of them as though he were the same old person. For a whole week, Ilia had floundered in a fog of confusion, not sure what to think, say, or do about what she'd discovered. Then their day off rolled around again, and her feet carried her to her hiding place before she even knew what she was doing.

Today made the third time, and the young woman basked in the all-over warm feeling she received just from watching as he once again shed the pretense of normality and worked up to that shining perfection that almost seemed to pour out of his skin with the sweat. Link was larger than life, a dynamo of strength that was blinding and unapproachable, exuding an aura of sub-conscious energy that threatened to burn her from across the field. It was intoxicating, and captivated her such that she never heard the soft footsteps coming up behind her.

"There you are Ilia!" the high, sweet voice said, and the teenage girl nearly jumped out of her skin as she was caught red-handed. "I've been looking all over for you! Uncle Jaggle _thought_ he saw you come up this way, and here you are! Your dad wanted me to tell you—"

Ilia rolled over and looked up to see Beth, who stopped talking when she noticed the look of abject, terrified guilt on her 'big sister's' face. The look begged only one question, which she asked immediately with a quickly growing smile.

"Hey! Just what are you doing up here anyway?" her rising tone made sure Ilia knew she'd realized the girl was up to no good. Before Ilia could leap up and snatch her, Beth dodged around and looked over the cliff. The young girl gasped as her jaw dropped open, and Ilia moved too late to bundle her down into the shrubs before Link caught them both. Beth was speechless in the dirt, and Ilia could hardly blame her. Link had reached his push-up reps.

The ritual started slow, with simple push-ups in quick succession as he balanced on the tips of his toes, maximizing the strain on his arms. He quickly moved to working one arm at a time, then did a handstand and worked through the same routine with his body stock-straight in the air above him. When he finished with his one-arm, hand-stand push-ups, he retrieved a medium-sized rock from his yard and did it all over again with it on his back. When he switched to a hand-stand again, he held it between his legs—and that's where Beth came in. The combination of balance and raw strength was enough to take anyone's breath away, and so the barely-budding girl hadn't stood a chance.

"Is-is-is that _Link_?" Beth asked, when she found her voice again. Ilia hissed at her to be quiet as Link collapsed on his sweat-dampened canvas and began his sit-up reps. Ilia didn't blame the girl for wondering, because there was honestly something _utterly_ different about Link when he wasn't holding back. It was almost like he was a different person than he'd been a few months ago; certainly different than he pretended to be to people's faces.

"Yeah, yeah it is," and the older girl's face flushed with fresh embarrassment as she couldn't keep the husky breathlessness out of it. She felt like she'd been caught doing something shameful, but it didn't lessen her built-up excitement in the least, and her eyes were still riveted. "A-are you going to tell anyone about this?" Ilia eventually managed to whisper.

"Uhhh… huh?" Beth was distracted, almost certainly feeling quite a few sensations that she might well not have known _existed_ before now. At the moment, Link had hefted his weight-stone and was doing his sit-ups with it held above his head as far as he could reach. The way the muscles rippled under his skin was entrancing, and both Ilia's and Beth's heads tilted unconsciously to the side in the same motion sympathetically.

"HEY, LINK!" a deep voice bellowed from around the bend leading to the village, and both girls shrieked quietly. Link was startled out of his perfect concentration, and like a snuffer clapping down over a candle, the unbelievable heat and energy he'd been projecting vanished. He was suddenly plain-old Link again, and he was looking around for the intruder. Ilia pressed Beth's head into the tall grass and hunched down herself, neither girl daring to move.

**Link's Doorstep, Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

Link was charged and energized. The urge to exercise, to push his body to the incredible extremes it had become capable of, made no logical sense to him at all. That didn't change the fact that it felt _great_, just like racing around on Epona and practicing his swordsmanship with the heavily weighted training sword he'd cobbled together. When he did those things, he felt whole and satisfied in a way that a regular day's hard work couldn't _begin_ to approach.

"Link?" the voice shouted again, and this time Link recognized it as Rusl's cool, jovial call. "Are you up there, son?"

"Yeah, yeah, hello Rusl," Link shouted back down the path as he pried himself off the canvas and padded over to the water barrel he'd left at the foot of his house's ladder. He doused himself with one ladle-full and then drank the next down, and by the time he was done, Rusl was standing at the mouth of the pathway.

The older man scratched at his stubble as he looked from the sweat-soaked canvas to Link, who made no pretension to modesty as he stood in the summer heat wearing nothing but his damp loincloth. He must have looked quite a sight, sweat-soaked, muscle's steaming, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back against his ladder. If Rusl had any comment, he kept it to himself.

"Well, Link, I'm glad I caught you," Rusl broke the silence and walked up with a smile, carefully avoiding tracking his boots on Link's tarp. Link said nothing, but considered his aging mentor seriously from behind the brown hair damped down over his eyes. Rusl's next words caught in his throat for a moment, but he shook off whatever was bugging him and went ahead with, "How've you been, Link? We haven't had a chance to really get down to talking since… since you brought the children back."

"I'm… fine." Link eventually answered. "Good food, honest work, my family all safe at home again… what could possibly be wrong?" That's what Link said, but there was an edge on his tone that even he noticed, and Rusl gave him an extremely knowing smile, as though some suspicion of his had been firmly settled.

"Link… oh Link… I think I'd almost forgotten what it was like for me, back when I was your age." Rusl's tone was heavy with memories, and his remembering danced behind his smiling eyes. Link was immediately intrigued, and he raised an eyebrow as he mopped his hair out of his face. "Believe it or not, I know exactly what it's like to come home from running around the wide world and see the old stomping grounds with new eyes. I'm probably the only person in fifty miles who's done half as much traveling as you, you know."

"Heh, I guess you got me," Link admitted, when he realized the older man had only half an insight into what was worrying at Link's nerves. He calmed and went with the flow. "Ordon… even all of Ordonia… it's a damn small place."

For a breathtaking instant, Link thought Rusl had noticed his concealed capacities. Link had been careful to only fully reveal his more-than-human talents to Zelda, Midna, and the opponents that got between him and whatever needed doing. Only two of those people were alive to tell the tale. He'd shown off to the other ranch hands in a fit of reckless abandon, but even that had been but a shadow. The Link that rushed head-first into monster-infested temples and did battle with towering, blood-thirsty fiends was not something he _ever_ revealed to those around him. Truthfully, he never quite knew where that caution rooted from; it had sort of evolved along with Midna's insistence that no one discover his transformation ability. It seemed like a worthwhile effort though, considering that his powers still half-frightened _him_, the one who lived with them, and he had no interest in terrifying others or otherwise becoming an object of fear.

"Yes, the country life can be pretty dull, once you've had a taste of the big city and felt the measure of the countryside with your own two feet," Rusl went on, his mind miles away. He snapped back to the present suddenly and considered Link more seriously. "I've noticed that you've been slacking off around the farm, and it wasn't hard to put two and two together. This place is boring you to tears, isn't it?" His grin was epic.

"Uh…" Link considered that question with more thought than it had asked for, and Rusl gave him an odd look. Link ignored it, and answered only after a long moment. "Really, Rusl, its not that I'm bored. Not at all. Sure, there's nothing glamorous or thrilling about being 'Link the Ranch-hand,' as opposed to 'Link the Wandering Swordsman.' But… glamor isn't what I'm after. I'd be happy to live out the rest of my life right here with you guys. You're my family, and it'd be pretty greedy for me to ask for more from life than what you all can give."

"Goodness, Link!" Rusl gave him a wondering look, the rather clumsy words still reaching out to him. Link stopped him from saying more with a gesture as he went on.

"That would be enough, except for one thing." Link paused and looked the closest thing he had to a father right in the eye. "I'm _not_ a ranch hand anymore, Rusl. Or at least, I'm not _just_ that. I went out chasing after the kids, and I lent my hand to you and the Committee to Restore Hyrule… and I became something… more." The pleading look in Link's eyes filled the gaps in his fumbling explanation, and Rusl nodded. "I feel like… like I'm letting my abilities go to waste. The village doesn't need me for what I can _do_, it needs me as a strong back to work a job that leaves most of my skills to flounder. I don't know… it just…"

"You don't have to explain it to me, Link," Rusl told him, putting a comforting hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I made the mistake of assuming your restlessness was the same as mine, but that doesn't change the fact that you're not meant to be whiling away your life in a one-horse village like Ordon. Not at your age."

"Rusl…!"

"No, Link, hear me out on this. I was just like you once: young, brash, better with a sword than most, and determined to take up as much of the world as I could fit in my own two hands. People like you and me don't sit around tending goats. I've known from the first time I looked in your eyes across a sparring circle that you would leave Ordon some day."

"Rusl, come on!" Link said, disturbed by the odd tract the older man was rambling off on. "No one's talking about me leaving the village! Where would I even go? What would I do? People here may not need all I can give, but I'm still needed here!"

"Link, you need to face the fact that you're a very big fish in a rather small pond," Rusl stated quite flatly. "You're a strong hand to have around, but just look at yourself! You're going out of your mind, cooped up here in the back-ass of nowhere. You should be out in the world, being everything you can possibly be, testing yourself to the farthest limits you can achieve. _That's_ the only way you're ever going to escape this funk you're in."

Link was silent for a while, his mentor's words biting deep into his heart and resonating with the repressed feelings there. His frizzled, drying hair crowded around his eyes as he stared at the hard, compassionate man across from him.

"I… I think you're probably right," he admitted, "but I can't just leave everyone here in the lurch. The only thing I _really_ want is for Ordon to prosper, for us all to have better lives."

"I hear you there, son, and that brings me to my next point," Rusl said, his smile somehow managing to widen. "Don't you think you do more to help as a swordsman, anyway? Not just for Ordon, but for all of Hyrule?"

"What?" Now Link was entirely confused, and Rusl chuckled as he pulled something out of his belt-pouch and held it out. "This letter came from an old friend of mine working for the newly reorganized government. You know him too, though I never saw you say much to old Auru. Anyway, I want you to read it, give what he says some hard thought, and then consider what I just said again." He winked at Link and shook his hand. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to talk about. You be sure to put on some more clothes now, son," he advised as he walked away, and chuckled, "Even in weather like this, you can still catch cold if you're not careful."

Link looked down at the official-looking letter in his hand, then back at Rusl, who whistled as he stalked back toward the village. What the hell had _that_ been all about?

**Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

Beth watched Rusl turn the bend in the path, and then looked anxiously over at Ilia. The two of them had heard _everything_.

"Ilia… does this mean that Link is going away?" Beth asked, all confusion from earlier suffused under waves of new fear. The thought of losing her coolest big brother all over again was shockingly upsetting. When she got no answer, she took another look at Ilia, and realized that however upsetting the idea was to her, Ilia had her beat, hands down. The older girl was in a sort of deep shock, and Beth left her to it, thoroughly disturbed. Without further hesitation, Beth turned and scrambled back home.

Ilia didn't notice Beth leave. As the day wore on, she didn't seem to notice the shadows lengthening. The world might as well not even have been there. Eventually, she stood up and, her expression of breathless fear never budging, she trudged off into the evening air.

**Link's House, Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

After reading Auru's letter, Link sat in thought for a good, long time. In a certain respect, the equation was simple: Hyrule needed him, and he had no choice but to answer the call. At the same time, he realized that there _was_ a choice, and the part of him that eagerly rushed to the proffered challenges was a strangely detached voice in his mind. It nearly screamed at him to pack this instant and ride off into the sunset. A large part of what he considered his true, 'normal' self actually agreed, but the duality he still felt disturbed him deeply.

In the past, he clearly _hadn't_ had much choice in his actions. First the children needed him, so he had to break the shadow curse on the land and rescue them. As Midna had explained, simply securing them would never be enough as long as Zant plagued Hyrule. And then Midna had been injured, and Zelda had sacrificed all that she was to empower them to defeat the twilight, and Link could never have lived with himself if he'd allowed her sacrifice to be in vain, or if he'd let Midna's hidden, secret softness be suborned and succumb to Zant's evil. There was no choice at all.

To serve those he loved, Link had gone past what he'd thought were his limits. He'd broken every boundary of human ability that might have kept him from his goals, and had been reformed in a crucible of battles against things that a single man had no business facing alone. That was the process that had made him what he was now, whatever the hell _that_ might be. Now he was something _else_, he could feel the difference as much as others could, when he allowed it to show. But now he also, for the first time, had a _choice_.

In truth, he'd decided to leave weeks ago, deep in his heart. But the way his spirit seemed to split over the question—the foreign breath of uncontrolled eagerness that bloomed at this opportunity—frightened him so much that he had to sit down and examine it for quite a while. In the end, there was nothing to do but start packing. The way his soul cheered the instant the choice was settled upon almost made him stop again, but he shook off that in the interest of time. This growing strangeness was a problem for later, considering that it might simply go away by itself.

The process of packing for a journey was a simple one for Link, who by now was an accomplished traveler. Some secret impulse had compelled him to keep a full array of supplies on hand and ready in the first place, one of many clues that spoke of the inevitability of this journey. For everything else, he had merely to step into his basement storage room and kick open one of the many freshly-built chests he'd squeezed into the space. In a way, it was almost a waste as he started to rummage through them. He was emptying them out, and he could still smell the fresh coat of wood finish the cooper had slapped on when Link bought them.

After his journey, Link was absolutely certain that, if nothing else, he was no longer the Hero Chosen by the Gods. Evil was defeated, dead and gone. Perhaps to shed the sense of destiny he'd been traveling under for so long, he'd wanted to at least put as much of his 'hero of destiny' equipment to rest as he could manage. It was a cosmetic effort only—no one knew that better than him. But still, he _had_ to do it.

The master sword was simply returned to its home, a useful trinket and a fine blade, but nothing that Link had any desire to keep around. The sense of sanctified, righteous power in that blade was enough to make one's hair stand on end, and such hallowed force was not for the ken of mortal men. If evil, _true_ evil, ever again threatened the land while he drew breath, only then would Link even _consider_ disturbing that holy artifact. It was too much a reminder of that supernatural strangeness; the direct divine influence that he'd never really bought into, and would love to forget.

After that, things got a bit more complicated. The equipment he'd looted from various temples and holy grounds was of widely varying providence. The hero's bow was returned to the Gorons only with much complaining. 'He was the hero,' they'd argued, it was his by 'divine right.' At length, he'd convinced them to take it back and hold it for some future hero.

More mystical items had been somewhat easier. The gale boomerang was mildly sentient, and he'd gotten the impression that it could take care of itself. He'd chucked it, and it had flow off over the horizon on a gentle breeze. The rod of command was as much a religious relic as the master sword, and after long consultation with the Ooccoo peoples, he'd left it secure in the sky city. He'd also offered them their claw shot back, but they'd been quick to point out that they didn't need it to get around, and furthermore, they had no hands to use it. He'd had trouble arguing against that, and hadn't belabored the point.

Other than that, there was really no one to return his ill-gotten tools _to_, much less anyone to protest his keeping them. He'd offered Prince Ralis the zora-scale armor back, and he'd accepted it only after the same protests the Gorons had made. They hadn't wanted the claw shot from the Lake Temple either, and he'd been left with both. The spinner was a true oddity, and after much thought, he decided to leave it at the arbiter grounds with the sages. He'd thought it convenient to do it on the trip out to see off Midna, and he'd nearly forgotten, with how that _turned_ out. Almost as an afterthought, he'd tried to present the Ordon sword to Princess Zelda as Ordonia's gift to the monarchy. She'd laughed right in his face and pressed the blade back into his hands, assuring him that the province had already given Hyrule a much, much greater gift.

And then, though he was hardly half-done, he'd been out of options. Everything else he'd bought with his own money or won fair and square, and was wholly and rightfully his. Thus, his basement was like an arsenal from some military fortress, and he'd invested in locks to keep it all away from curious children. More specifically, he'd bought the locks to keep it all away from Talo.

By the time he'd finished reminiscing, everything was packed up in saddlebags and belt-pouches. His bomb bags were empty, but that could be easily fixed with money. His quiver was also empty, but it mattered little with no bow to his name—although he'd actually set in motion the fix to that weeks ago, providing another clue that he'd secretly always realized he would be leaving again. His sword and shield were cleaned and ready, something he'd done almost obsessively before sleeping every night out of pure, unshakeable habit from his journey. That left nothing at all, except the clothes.

The green armor that had been a gift from the light spirits was a touchy spot for Link, although, as with most of his efforts to leave behind the title of 'Hero Chosen by the Gods,' he couldn't say quite why. Wearing it certainly felt _right_, but it was also a terrible reminder of his journey, and what he'd lost in that time. At the end of the day, he couldn't quite bear to don it again, but he still packed it. That meant he was unarmored for the time being, but he planned to correct that when he fixed his bow deficiency. And that… was that. He was ready to leave.

By cosmic coincidence, Link had just sat down to start writing a letter to Ilia when someone knocked on his door. It was odd for someone to bother knocking—the window was open and even half a yell would carry anywhere in his house. Link set down his grease pencil and walked over to answer the knock, completely forgetting that he was naked from the waist up. It wouldn't have mattered, except that the instant he opened his door, Ilia spilled in and clutched to his chest in base desperation. He nearly fell over in shock, his body going stone-rigid as the little slip of a girl pressed up against him.

She had been crying.

**Ordon Village, Ordonia Province**

Ilia walked as though in a dream, unconcerned with where her feet were taking her. She was vaguely aware that she was crying. She didn't know exactly why. What she _did_ know, in a sudden revelation, was that she was standing on Link's doorstep. Her heart leaped into her throat, and she hesitated. Then she remembered the words she'd overheard, and she swallowed her fear and knocked loudly in one swift burst of desperation. It took everything she had not to turn and run away the next moment. She survived that terrifying wait mostly by leaning against his door and holding her breath.

When the door opened, Ilia wasn't ready ye, _by_ _far_, and she tripped over the threshold to impact against the immovable barrier of warm strength that was Link. She could have died, but instead, she felt herself melting on to him. He was hard, her face pressed against him was like rubbing against sun-warmed stone, but he made no move to push her away, just as he made no move to accept or return her inadvertent embrace.

For a while, they stood in the doorway like that, the rest of the world miles away. Then Link's hands clapped onto her shoulders and he pulled her slightly away so he could look at her face with his shocked eyes. He was gentle, but his grip held the promise of vice-like strength, and though she was only an inch or two shorter than him, she felt as helpless as a child in the shadow of a towering adult. Her shocked, terrified eyes met his for an instant, and then he was peering out into the night to make sure no one saw him usher her inside.

When they were safe from prying eyes, Link turned to her with questions jockeying for position in his mind. What finally tumbled out was, "Ilia, what are you doing here so late?" It wasn't much of a question—just by the way he checked for intruding eyes he'd shown that he felt the air of guilt around her. He watched Ilia stand there in his house, shivering and fidgeting like a terrified child, and his face softened.

"I—I—" Ilia suddenly forgot how to form words, her mind's eye filling in the deafening aura of energy that Link was so artfully concealing. At length, she forced her eyes to focus on his gentle, inviting expression, and she began to calm down. When he stepped forward and took her small, soft hand into his calloused, steel-muscled paw, she jerked in surprise. The world, blurry from her scattered wits, coalesced again for the first time in hours. "Link!" She gasped, as though she just noticed him, wrapping both of her hands around his and pulling it to her heart in a beseeching gesture, "Please, don't leave!"

Link choked, his face twisting up like he'd just been kicked by Epona. He wasted no time going nearly as pale as Ilia had been when she staggered in, and it took him a moment before he could breathe. A few moments more and he finally seemed to gather his disheveled composure.

"How—" he began a new question, and realized it was the wrong one. "Ilia… I…" and he had to stop again. The utterly pitiable expression of need on her face had dug into his heart with two serrated talons and was holding on for dear life. He was saved from immediate compliance only with a sudden rally from the same wellspring of hot strength that supported him against giants, dragons, and demons. It was a combat-reflex, an instinctive response to an underhanded surprise-attack, and it made his face crowd up into a steely-eyed mask. "I don't know what you've heard," his voice came out harder than he'd ever have wished upon the girl, "but I _am_ leaving tomorrow. It's something I _need_ to do."

"No!" her voice cracked on a sob, the sudden burst of emotion washing off of the wall of his body with no effect. "No, Link! Please, you can't leave us again! You can't leave _me_! Link, I _lov_—" Link's hand slipped up and clapped over her mouth like a cast-iron gag, surprising her and sending her into muffled shrieks and struggling.

Her hands instantly stopped their trembling grip on his right fist and tried to dislodge his left, but she might as well have tried to pull apart riveted sheets of metal. She twisted and squirmed away from him, and he deftly tripped her over his leg and bundled her up against his chest with his free arm like she was an unruly kitten. She found herself eye-to-neck with him, still gagged by his hand, her heart thundering with mixed terror and excitement as she became intimately aware of the hard, hot expanse of his chest.

"Ilia, I know how you feel about me," Link said, and his voice was strangely distant as he almost whispered into the younger girl's ear. "I've known for a while. I was planning to leave you a letter, but I suppose, now that you're here, that it would be cowardly not to say it to your face." Ilia did not like where this was going, and she struggled anew in his unbreakable grip. She fought and fought, but she couldn't break away from him any more than she could shut out his too-calm whisper as he aimed a mortal blow right at her deepest, most secret places. "We… can't ever be together, Ilia."

The pain was not the sharp stab she'd expected, but rather, a sort of spreading cold that began in her chest and wormed its way through her veins to her every extremity. It was calming, chilling, but nothing at all like soothing as it slowly chased her struggles away. When she stood still in his arms, Link let her go. She used her freedom to press her face into his hot shoulder and grip him by the belt for support. She wasn't crying, but tears that she imagined would never stop threatened from just behind the veil of cold.

"It's _that_, isn't it?" she said, in the tiniest voice he'd ever heard from her. In a move that had nothing to do with sense or feelings, and everything to do with mind-bending desperation, Ilia resorted to the only gambit she could imagine.

With the bravado of the cornered animal, Ilia pressed her breasts flush against his chest and rubbed them against him in the most distracting way she could manage with her shirt and chest bindings still between them. It caught him completely off guard, and as he scrambled to push her away, she took the opportunity to go for broke. One hand darted down the loose binding of his work pants and the other slipped up around his neck so she could pull herself the inch up to his lips. In that moment, Ilia was the first normal person to ever penetrate Link's guard since he'd drawn the master sword and sealed the fate of divine power etched onto his soul. She'd used an attack neither he nor the blazing power germinating inside him knew any defense or counter for. Now if only she'd known what to do from there, her gambit might have had some future.

Ilia was not a naive girl by any means. She lived on a farm that bred livestock, and so had a complete understanding of the mechanical aspect of where children came from. But in the realm of seduction, she was a rank amateur, and the fire flowing between their bodies from the connections at her lips and in her hand faded slowly as she found herself at a complete loss. In her half-innocent daydreams, her imagined lovers took command the moment things got past heavy petting, and now she was out of her depth. She began to cry slowly as she pulled away on both fronts and planted her open hands on his chest, forced to use words to say what she could not make her blushing body convey.

"If you want me… _please_… take me…" Ilia whispered as she wept, meaning the words with every fiber of her being. She no longer had any illusion that this would sway him to stay, but that didn't make her want it any less. Her entire body throbbed with a hunger for him that was hot and wet and rubbed around the inside of her skin like velvet-gloved fingers. Even the smell of his bare skin was intoxicating, filling her with a heady rush that promised she'd welcome _anything_ he wanted to do to her.

Link growled, actually _growled_, low and deep in his throat, like he was the biggest dog that had ever walked on two legs. Fear, quick and cold, shot into the girl's spine and mixed with her boiling desire to create a dire cocktail. Before she could make any motion to react, Link snatched her wrists in two vice-strong hands and bore her backwards until he'd pinned her to the wall by her arms, his half-naked body only inches from her. A tremor played through her every recess as an aura of danger began to radiate from Link's every pore, the threat piercing through her lust, even as it somehow magnified her attraction. Her mouth gaped like a fish's as her body arched in a vain struggle to mesh with his, the need for stimulus clouding what shambles of reason she might still possess.

It was in that stalemate that Link finally gripped himself with iron bands of self control, shutting down his body's urges one by one with application of discipline he'd originally learned in order to weather the pain of wounds in combat. When he no longer felt like a passenger in his own flesh, he opened his eyes and let his gaze bore in at Ilia. She'd had a chance to calm down herself, and could not lift her sight from the floorboards to save her life.

She was blushing so hard it hurt, and it felt like her body would explode from the twin pains racing through her veins. Embarrassment and shame terrorized her, both from the way she'd behaved, and the fact that she'd been so handily spurned. Link's rejection was complete, and the few thoughts she still had were mostly the certainty that she would never be able to look him in the eye again as long as she lived.

"Ilia… believe it or not… I care about you. Probably more than you will ever know. I want nothing in this world more than for you… and everyone else in the village to be safe and happy for as long as we all might live."

Ilia shivered, her body going numb in self-defense. It was not a cold numb like the first had been, but a tingling that would soon be the utter lack of sensation. The blissful release of a flat swoon lay in that direction, but Link refused to let her go. His words held a hard edge that cut her mind and brought her back from the edge of a faint.

"I don't expect you to understand—I barely understand myself—but I'm… not what I used to be before." Link said it like he was revealing the deepest darkest secret of his shamed soul. Ilia realized she already knew what he was talking about, and lifted her head before she remembered to be broken and despondent.

"I saw," she said, her words hoarse, "I know." The admission hung in the air for a moment, Link's heartfelt explanation dying on his lips as he recognized her sincerity. "You're… _bigger_ than a regular person now. Its… _frightening_…" and Ilia felt Link's body flinch across the short gap separating them, "… and beautiful. It's beautiful like a wild beast that you can admire and love, but can never cage or keep." As she spoke the words, Ilia realized that, in her heart, she'd understood their truth long before now. She'd known her effort was futile before her unconscious mind had carried her to Link's door. But of course, love wouldn't let her not _try_.

Link laughed. He laughed like he wanted to cry, but there were no tears in him, and he collapsed around Ilia's shoulders, bringing her in to his chest like he was clutching to a lifeline. He'd found someone who understood, someone that saw through to some inkling of what he was facing all on her own, and still chose to speak to him. The only other person who had managed that had fled from him on black wings of twilight, and was gone. Ilia let him laugh onto her shoulder, but she could not but feel hollow inside.

"I've… I've been trying so _hard_, Ilia." He said it like it was essential that she believe it, and she _did_. She knew her Link, she knew he would try until his very soul bled, but the knowledge brought her no comfort. "But this thing… this power inside of me… its just so…" he struggled for words to quantify sensations that other people would never face, "_big_. It's big, and it's restless, and it feels trapped. _I_ feel trapped. So much of me doesn't want to go, but you were right to liken it to a beast. I'm afraid… I'm afraid that if I don't escape this feeling of entrapment, I'll gnaw at myself until I've cleaved off everything that holds me here. Until I've got no reason to stay, and no reason to ever _come_ _back_."

"Link…" Ilia whispered, weeping without hesitation, doubly so as she realized that he could not shed the tears he was feeling. "What happened to you?" The question was heartfelt, and Link considered it in silence as she pressed her ear into his collarbone and listened to his rock-steady pulse.

"I got strong…" he said, "I got strong so I could save you, the children, and everyone else. No one ever _asked_ me if I wanted it… but _without_ it… everyone would have…"

"Oh, Link," Ilia felt her heart breaking, finally and absolutely. She knew little of his journey, of the horrors he'd faced and the trials he'd overcome to rescue her and everything that made her world bright and happy. But now she knew at least _some_ of the price he'd paid—because he'd sacrificed any future they might have had together. It was a bitter pill to swallow, this cruel divine irony. What caring gods would grant a hero the strength to save a maiden, and then forbid them from happiness together?

For some time, the two life-long friends and might-have-been lovers embraced in the hard darkness of Link's humble house. The hot summer day had birthed a humid night, and there was no sound but soft breaths and insects to intrude. It was the kind of moment when you could feel the planet spinning beneath you.

"Link… could I ask one thing of you?" Ilia said all at once, not even sure what she was thinking as she spoke it. She felt him nod. "I want to see it."

"_It_?" Link asked, heavy with implication. If the moment had been less utterly grave, it might have been funny, but Ilia wasn't laughing.

"That power… that unbelievable, beautiful thing inside of you…" Ilia's voice was distant, like a dreamer's whispers. "I want to see it all. If it's stolen you away from me, I want to know just how deep it goes."

"But—" A part of Link quailed at the very thought; he wasn't even sure he'd felt the full measure of that force himself. It could be… chancy.

"I need at least this much!" Ilia growled, "Please!" After denying her everything else, he didn't have it in him to try and shield her from this too. Link only hesitated for a moment.

"Look me in the eyes," he told her. She nodded, and what had only minutes ago seemed impossible was suddenly as easy as leaning back and opening her eyes.

What she saw wasn't the boy she'd grown up with, not _really_. What was standing in front of her, towering over her psychologically, if not physically, was… a giant. This was not the lost boy Rusl had brought home from one of his patrols to be adopted into the village. It wasn't the taciturn, serious little tough-guy who would rather work his hands bloody than pay a moment's notice to the horse-crazy, pigtailed little whelp she'd been. What it was, without interruption, was the boy who'd stood between her and a pair of wild dogs, driving them off at the cost of nearly-fatal wounds. It was that most integral part of Link, the part that would kick, rage, maul, mangle, and murder anything that threatened what he cared for, only _more_ _so_. It was that part distilled, magnified once, and then magnified twenty more times, until it filled the room to the rafters with a barely-restrained lethal potential. Looking into two eyes like ice-cold iron daggers, eyes that spoke of feral blood-thirst tempered by only the most fragile restraint, she was transfixed. The blue consumed her, became her world, and it was then that she _saw_.

The vision came unbidden. At first she didn't know what was happening, but then it was so real that she didn't care. In the wells of Link's eyes, Ilia saw the past and future of a man that was as much a concept and ideal as a physical being. A hundred swords over countless thousands of years rose and fell in a cadence of heroism that stretched back into forgotten ages. The hero, the knight, and the guardian stared back at her from an eternal spring of courage. It was a history written in the red ruin of creatures small and gargantuan, of fiends and minions and the damned in never-ending legions, and of loss and sacrifices untold. In that wave of forced insight, Ilia felt her heart balloon in her chest.

The love and pride that buoyed her upward was as hot and persistent as the numbness it incinerated was cold and ephemeral. Finally, she set aside her selfish lust to clutch Link to herself alone, and let in the warmth he'd been radiating freely since the moment he'd recognized her at his door. It had always been there, even when he was feral and dangerous, even when he was outwardly cold and distant, and even when she'd made her clumsy bid to snatch a piece of him for herself before he grew too big for her to even dream of approaching. She took that warmth and let it fill her up like he was the sacred spring itself and she was some jar that might hope to contain his magic.

The visions never stopped dancing in her eyes, and she accepted them greedily as she strove to retain all she was given. Link, through the grace or curse of the gods, had been gifted and burdened with something great and terrible. It made him huge, such that keeping him in Ordon was like trying to hold the sun in a shoebox. She finally understood why he had to leave, why nothing else would work for any of them. Link's power, restrained as it was, would eventually burst, and would burn up everyone around him in its efforts to reach the wide world where it belonged. But all that was beside the point.

The thought that plastered Ilia's face with a drug-addicts smile, as the images of innumerable battles danced in her brain, was that she was _loved_. Link was a mammoth, an entity that would change the course of nations and generate ripples in history that would be felt for a thousand years. And yet, he loved a tiny little mote of nothing like her as though she actually deserved it. They could never be together—it would be like a moth loving a bonfire. She would burn up in the wake of the actions he couldn't help but take, and fall by the wayside, spent. It didn't matter though, not in the least. It didn't matter, because she was cared for by a giant. In the vision-induced haze, this was more precious by far than all the love of a man giving her a life and a family, which is all she had hoped for before.

At length, it was all too much, and Ilia's eyes rolled back in her head as she fainted dead away. Link started to panic, and when the symbol of the triforce traced itself just under each of her eyes in glowing golden lines, he almost dropped her in shock. It was only when a sudden whispering in his gut reassured him that he stopped himself from going prematurely ballistic. 'She got too close to a fire,' he realized spontaneously, 'and she was marked by the heat.'

Link's world, which had been surreal, simple, and straightforward during that almost religious experience that had begun with Ilia's arrival, suddenly transformed into the complicated mess it had been since his compass in this world of power had abandoned him for her home in the twilight. A thousand things raced through his mind, not the least of which was that it was well past dark and Ilia was unconscious in his arms. How would _that_ look?

In the end, Link sucked it up and dismissed his anxieties with the same reservoir of unfazed courage that let him fly in the face of man-eating, gargantuan monstrosities. It simply occurred to him that if he wasn't intimidated by people who wanted to cut him open and feed on his guts, suck out his soul, or grind his bones to make their bread, fearing the love-tempered ire of people who genuinely cared for him was frankly silly. He hefted Ilia into his arms like she weighed less than nothing and carried her back to her house without even bothering to put his shirt on. Miraculously, and almost certainly only because he really _didn't_ care what happened, no one saw him as he bundled her home. He was tapping on Mayor Bo's door with his boot before anyone was the wiser to his suspicious burden.

"Who's there?" the Mayor shouted, gruff and annoyed. Clearly it wasn't Ilia, who wouldn't knock on her own door, and he expected no callers at this hour. Link considered shouting back, but couldn't think of what to say. Before he could resolve his indecision, the door swung open.

Bo looked out at the scene outside his door, and his old, run-down heart nearly jolted to a final stop. He choked on his surprise, and only managed to recover as he stumbled backward. Something about seeing the strapping form of Link stripped to the waist with his darling little wildflower perched effortlessly in his arms like a blushing bride brought to mind half-remembered nightmares. They were nightmares about his little pumpkin growing up and away, about getting old and useless and being replaced, all embodied by a scene of abject happiness. Then he saw the solemn look on Link's face, and the particularly limp set to his little girl, and he panicked in a whole different direction.

"What's wrong?" he asked, terrified, accusatory, and pleading all at the same time. He dashed up and made to snatch his world away from Link, only for the younger man to barge past him and set her down on the mayor's own hammock.

"Nothing, she's fine, Sir." Mayor Bo was _Sir_, as he always had been, and probably would still have been if Link had wed Ilia and sired the man's grandchildren. He respected the Mayor fiercely; from the moment he'd given a job to an orphan stranger with pointed Hylian ears and saved Link from starving in the unfeeling world. "We were talking at my place, and she just passed out. She doesn't seem ill though. I decided I should bring her home to rest."

The evasive explanation had just enough truth that it slipped by the shrewd old man in his moment of anxiety. What Link couldn't figure out was why he hadn't asked about the symbols on her face yet. Even when he leaned over her to caress her hair in a gesture of fatherly tenderness, he still didn't make any comment. The marks were large and glowing with a bright golden sheen, it wasn't exactly something you could mistake for a bit of jovial face-painting. Link's guts started talking again, and it occurred to him that he was the only one who could see the mark. After everything he'd been through, glowing symbols that others couldn't see made perfect sense.

"Mayor, there's something else I need to talk with you about," Link said, deciding to get this over with too, as long as he was here. The Mayor looked up and around like he'd totally forgotten about the younger man. "I'm planning to leave the village."

"What?" the Mayor wasn't in the frame of mind to even process that statement, and he floundered for a while as Link waited patiently. "Oh. Well." The Mayor looked thoughtful for a while longer, and then nodded. "To be honest, my boy, I've known this moment was coming for quite a while. I figured I was blessed to have a wonder like you around for as long as I could keep you." He was far more accommodating that Link had expected, and they struck up a conversation now that it was clear Ilia was calm and stable in her sleep. They spoke of many things, including the care of Link's house, the foaling season, new families moving in around the region, and Mayor Bo's iron boots. He flatly refused to accept them back.

"I figure I could leave as early as tomorrow," Link offered, as a way to close out the conversation.

"So soon?" asked the Mayor. "Well, at least make sure to say goodbye to everyone before you leave. There isn't a soul around who won't be sorry to see you go, Link."

Link wasn't so sure of that himself. He looked over at Ilia's sleeping form, wondering what she had taken away from that final boon he'd granted to her. Certainly she'd _looked_ pleased by whatever she saw in the depths of his eyes, deep down where that power of his resided, but he just didn't know. For all he could say for certain, she never wanted to see him again, and that thought hurt him in a way that being cut by a sword never could. And hell, even though his intuition refused to let him worry about the marks on her face, he didn't have a freaking _clue_ what _that_ was all about. He nodded to the Mayor and went home, the world on his mind. He had goodbyes to plan.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

I removed a few jarring parenthesized parenthetical statements (i.e. this: a side statement offset by parenthesis). As far as I know, this and the next chapters are the only places where I used them, making them totally extraneous.

With this chapter I was still playing around, looking for the tone I wanted to strike in the story as a whole. The result is something of an outlier in tone from any other part of these books. Out of nearly thirty huge chapters, it's the only one that makes extended reference to romantic feelings and lust. It was a great deal of fun to write, because if there's anything I enjoy, its trashy melodramatic fluff. For humor's sake, I decided to give Ilia an inappropriate fangirl lusting for Link, because hey—girls can objectify sexy men just as easily as men can objectify sexy women. Cultural mores aside, I feel like there is a double standard for men and women on this subject, as there is for so very many things. Observant readers will notice that more than one lady will admire Link for his body alone over the course of these books. This is an intentional pattern.

Obsessive fans of Twilight Princess will notice that I did not cover a comprehensive list of all available equipment while describing the disposition of Link's video game gear. The original cause of this oversight was that it had been months since I finished the game when I wrote this and I was not yet committed enough to the project to bother doing any research. Of particular note is the magical ball and chain, which I did not remember was available in Link's 'inventory' until sometime halfway through book 2. If anyone is wondering, for the purposes of 'The Golden Power' and to serve my personal laziness, the ball and chain was destroyed in Link's final battle with Gannon. So there.

Finally, this chapter has the appearance of a 'bluff' plot thread. That is to say, I wrote in a happening without any clear idea of what its long-term purpose in the plot would be, just because it seemed like a cool thing to have happen. That way, I would have some foreshadowing in place to make use of later when new ideas came to mind. Considering the way I carelessly drop that plot thread hard after chapter 3 and don't pick it up again until the first interlude, it shouldn't be too hard to identify.


	3. Crown & Sword

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 3: Crown & Sword**

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Princess Zelda glared across her desk at her finance minister and restrained her anger only with an effort. The mousy, bespectacled old man was a holdover from the regency government, and as such still had some illusions of authority independent from the crown. She didn't mind if her subordinates had ideas and suggestions to contribute—that and the realities of management delegation were why she kept them around. What _bugged_ her was the way he thought he had any grounds on which to reverse her decisions or simply refuse to implement her policies.

"This is the last time I shall repeat myself, Goban," Zelda's voice was icy with her anger, "You are to allocate Minister Ashei any and all funds she requires for the training and equipping of new troops."

"And I must tell _you_, Your Majesty," the diminutive little fellow was nearly red with his self-important bluster, "a military expansion is the last thing the royal treasury should be spending money on! The castle has barely even had its ground floor rebuilt! The cost of keeping those workers fed and moving is bleeding our coffers white as it is—we can't go paying a bunch of lumbering dullards with weapons, just so they can sit around eating up the people's food!"

"Enough!" Zelda snapped, and the word seemed to have a force of its own. Minister Goban was nearly blown back into his seat, face gone suddenly pale as he wondered at the magnitude of authority projected by the delicate, slight shape of the princess. "An extensive analysis of the nation as a _whole_," Zelda emphasized this, far past the point of exasperation with her ministers' tunnel vision on Castle Town, "shows that we can easily compensate for the cost of reconstruction and a military reorganization, if we simply open up the gates and reclaim the countryside from banditry and lawlessness."

"But—but that's the job of the nobility!" Goban protested, finding exactly the wrong argument as he aggravated the princess's other infuriating problem.

"And some job they've been doing!" she couldn't suppress a shout, though she reasserted her self-control before she continued. "You speak of men that have allowed Castle Town's west bridge to burn. They allowed roving bands of bullblins to occupy _both_ of the great bridges my grandfather built, and even sat by as the same bullblins built gates and dictated our travel options in our own lands! The dirt-paths we try to disguise as roads are so dangerous, our people are afraid to travel as far as Kakariko Village! Said village was _sacked_ while they twitted their thumbs. Overland trade has been crippled, and foreign merchants have avoided Hyrule for years. With all the damage that's been done, it's a wonder _my_ coffers have anything in them at all."

"I—" Goban started in again, and then saw the princess's murderous expression and wisely held his tongue.

"Furthermore," Zelda broke the silence harshly, having made a decision she'd been considering for quite a while, "I would shudder to think that your reluctance to divert free space in the budget would have anything to do with the Hyrule businessmen who've been keeping in such close contact with you. I'm sure I was rather clear about my position on subsidizing their petty little mercantilist warfare with _royal_ funds."

"Well, now that's just _preposterous_—" Goban started to bluster in pure desperation, and Zelda stared him down a second time until he fell back limp into his chair. He was certain she couldn't _prove_ he'd done anything treasonous, such as accepting a bribe for example, but not certain _enough_ to keep from sweating through his minister's robe.

"Minister Goban, please call in your chief deputy." Zelda's tone held no room for objection, and a somewhat shell-shocked Goban waved at a nearby page. The boy left, and soon enough a tall, incredibly young, brown-haired string-bean of a man walked in. His nervous eyes seemed to try and duck behind his enormous glasses, but he dutifully marched in and took up station behind his boss.

"What's your name?" Zelda broke protocol by addressing the young man directly. He was jolted back, and nearly dropped the heavy register he was carrying. When he'd recovered a fumbling grip on his burden, he looked to Goban for guidance.

"Don't look at him—I asked _you_," the princess cut off anything Goban might have said to cue his lackey, and she watched him purple with terrified rage as his subordinate simultaneously paled.

"J-Jinkens is my name, Your Majesty!" he stammered it out. It looked like the best he could do was preventing his knees from knocking, as far as his composure went.

"And do you know the general state of our finances, along with the mechanisms of our accounting and registry processes?" The question left him blinking. He caught himself before he looked at Goban again, and having nothing else to offer, eventually managed to go with honesty.

"Well, Your Majesty, I personally supervise all the junior accountants and have been sole manager of the royal register since I began working." Goban frowned bitterly and looked down, understanding what his underling had admitted, and knowing the princess couldn't help but see it too. It wasn't treason… but still…

"Ah, so, in effect," Zelda began, grinning, "You've been doing Minister Goban's job?"

"I've been… _assisting_," the young man responded, terrified to even half-lie to the tiny woman regarding him with such shrewd eyes. He demonstrated admirable, if terribly _misplaced_ loyalty, and Zelda was sure of herself immediately.

"Well, your days of assisting are over," she began, with an edge of anger that set him to premature cowering, "Because now you are the new Finance Minister."

"I'm… what?"

"Don't make me repeat myself, Minister," she said, her voice colored by her smile, "unless you are declining the position?"

"N-n-no!" He had a look of shocked happiness. His prospects of promotion had included Minister Goban dying of old age, only moments ago.

"Goban, you are dismissed. You may take as long as you like gathering your things, but I don't want to lay eyes on you again. Is that clear?" 'And you should be happy to keep your head,' did not have to be spoken. He'd underestimated her resources, cunning, and seriousness, just as she'd _overestimated_ his ability to shape up his act, and this was the result. That he wasn't six inches shorter was entirely because all the crimes she could _prove_ were those he'd committed in her father's day. That brooked him a pardon, and now they'd see if he'd appreciate her generosity.

Goban said nothing, but stood, bowed, and left. A cloud seemed to follow him out of the office. Through her instinct, and a bit of common sense, Zelda knew that wasn't the last she'd hear from a vindictive little shrew like him. She made a mental note to have her local spies continue surveillance on him, and she dearly hoped he wouldn't force her to retire him in a more… 'permanent' fashion. She filed that drearily dark thought, and then she turned to Jenkins.

"Your first act as my new finance minister will be to manage a few investments for me." Zelda had returned to business as usual, and it took the young man a moment to catch up. His pay had just tripled, and the only reason he wasn't weeping was because he'd been doing the _work_ that deserved that pay for a year already without hope of recognition, and was now in a state of happiness _beyond_ tears. At length, he sat down, clutching his registry book like a security blanket, and nodded. "Yes," Zelda was mildly annoyed to have to wait, but went on, "I'm concerned about capital for some plans I've been sketching out for the beginning of next year. In brief, I want twenty percent of what's left in the treasury to go into the shipwright industry along the south-eastern Cape of Tonza. Spread it around, though I don't care for the details."

"Tonza… yes…" Jinkens looked mortified, and Zelda realized that a little handling would be necessary.

"Don't worry, Minister," Zelda said, her tone softening as she concentrated on instilling a bit of confidence. "I know that it's technically illegal for the crown to invest in foreign businesses. After all, I was sitting on my father's knee when Goban, sufficiently bribed by the Castle Town elite, convinced him to sign that into law. I would simply repeal it myself, but I've more important things to do than face down the ire of rich, comfortable leaches. That's why you'll make the investments through a discreet partner I've made several arrangements with previously. His name is Malo Jaggleson, I trust you've heard of him?"

"Ah…" Jenkins had a bit of trouble watching his beautiful monarch rattle off such duplicity out of hand. Until two minutes ago, he'd held her in the kind of idealized regard that was never marred by concepts like 'deceitfulness,' and 'remorselessness.' Now he'd scrapped the ideal and replaced it with awe and a bit of fear. This all took some time, but he caught up with the question quickly enough. "Yes! He's the new money that came out of nowhere, right? The dwarf."

Zelda debated the value of correcting her newest minister, and rejected it at length. If Malo wanted to stylize himself as a dwarf rather than a staggering child prodigy, she couldn't really care less. The important thing was that he had a head for business that she could rely on not to get caught _too_ sharply on the snag of pure self-interest when she needed financial contacts. Economics was as much a weapon as an army on the stage they played upon, and it was good to know who would be best to do the stabbing when the time came.

"If I might ask," Jenkins interrupted Zelda right before she dismissed him, and she almost missed his words as her mind started processing a whole array of different tasks she had ahead of her, "Why ship-builders in Tonza?" Zelda smiled a proud smile, and decided to humor him.

"I have several lines of evidence that make me rather certain that a serious hurricane will strike the south_west_ cape around mid-summer." The statement was calm and level, but Jenkins still couldn't believe he'd heard her right.

"But… how is that even _possible_?" the skeptic in him lead him to tempt royal anger before he could catch himself. He regretted asking immediately, but Zelda just shook her head.

"The first clue I had was when my Tonza observer made a comment about the way the old captains were pulling out for the rest of the season, and how he and many others thought it an odd, daft thing to do. He also mentioned the charming color of the water and the direction of recent winds. I recalled something I read about weather predictions, consulted a few history books and almanacs, and trusted that some old captains knew what they were doing."

"But still—such certainty?"

"Yes, well, _then_ I consulted an almost uniquely Hylian resource. I sent a letter to the son of my grandfather's dear friend, and asked him for help. Prince Ralis spoke to a Zora sea-reader from their oceanic cousins and confirmed everything I suspected quite handsomely." Even now, Jinkens looked dubious, and Zelda lost her patience, waving him away with, "_Besides_, my information indicates that region is on the opening edge of a boom. Even if the hurricane never materializes, the gain on the investment will still be close to eighteen percent by next year."

Dismissed, Jenkins marched away with a wobble in his stride. The kind of sound financial reasoning and realist policies he'd just witnessed were such a change from the familiar that he was in a sort of shock. When he considered the freely-distributed deviousness she'd delegated to him without the slightest hesitation, he almost shivered. The most incredible thing, however, was that this was going to _work_. He'd heard his share of get-rich-quick schemes, and this was something else entirely. He ducked out of the way to one side as a huge man stomped in the other direction, and then kept his head down as he rushed to get to work at his new job.

Zelda's pen was scratching busily away at another missive, her mind split between planning her image for the upcoming garden party and projecting the cost of luring new industries to the area. Both trains of thought and her self-guided pen all screeched to a stop as the herald stepped in and spoke a name she'd come to revile.

"David Reanalds, Earl of Ordonia!" he half-shouted, in the way that heralds do. It never failed to infuriate her that the man felt he could intrude without appointment, but she considered it a moderate miracle that he'd managed to miss her finance meeting. Somehow, it was always harder to deal with matters of state after he'd been by.

"Your Majesty," the Earl said loudly, as he barged in, "you look lovely as usual." Zelda could imagine he truly thought so, though that line of consideration nauseated her. The Earl was a well-known philanderer, first of all, and she doubted her authority over him made her any less appealing a target of his lusts. Further, his lust for the _crown_ was so obvious, it was a wonder she hadn't caught him openly drooling at her ringless hand. It was a fantasy he could only ever live out through his son, but it was more than enough to disturb Zelda's digestion anyway.

There had been many a woman who had much the opposite reaction to the Earl's affections, and with good reason. His son had inherited his looks from the father, and with age and a life of power, those looks had solidified into an image that was at once dashing and majestic. He had black hair, broad shoulders, and the body of a man half his age, all of which combined with his money and influence to keep a procession of maids and lesser noblewomen marching through his bedchambers in grand style.

The Lady Reanalds was indifferent to his widespread affections, secure in the knowledge that she'd borne him his first heir and cemented a marriage he'd never be able to afford to annul, not that he'd shown any desire to. In any case, she had her own distractions, and hardly envied him his. In fact, the Lord and Lady were such a pair of like-minded snakes, Zelda couldn't imagine how their first born had wound up as such a lamb. The pit-viper in the gown they'd also produced was much more their breed, their daughter Avril being only a few months younger than Zelda, but already showing her forked tongue.

"Why, Earl, whatever brings you here on this fine day?" Zelda lied with every inch of her voice, face and eyes. "_Whatever will I have to do to get you to take yourself elsewhere_?" she thought, though she dared not to speak it. A man as powerful as Lord Reanalds was dangerous, even to a princess, and at this house she was in his power.

"Hmm, yes," he met her greeting with barely-veiled skepticism. He wasn't stupid by any stretch, and doubtless knew her opinion of him without her ever telling him. "When I heard you accepted an invitation to one of the family events… at last…" his arrogant indignation was not subtle, but not overt enough to object to, "I realized that, while working so diligently out here in the country, you might not have had a chance to obtain a new dress for the occasion."

Zelda didn't like where this was going, not the least because the insufferable prig didn't bother to keep the victorious look out of his eyes. He clapped once without further explanation, and a team of maids came in with a mass of dazzling fabric on hand. They stretched it out, and Zelda honestly didn't know what to say. It was a deep red gown absolutely covered with fine gold detail embroidery, roughly following the design of her robe of office with allowances for outdoor wear like a raised hem and heavier stitching.

Her immediate response to the unexpected gift was quickly tempered by a scream of suspicion from every corner of her mind. She thanked him as she would any noble who'd presented a gift and they exchanged verbal nothings for a while, something she could do without thinking. Zelda's mind had the much more vital task of figuring out what the hell Reanalds thought he was up to, the way he'd been shouting his victory through his eyes. As usual, he'd completely distracted her from running her country, and she _hated_ him for it.

**West Gate Tunnel, Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"Well hello there, Link. It's been a while." The tiny little fellow had to look up only four feet to watch link canter in on Epona, but only by virtue of the five feet of crates he was standing on. Malo hadn't done much growing in the past two months, by Link's measure, but if the small army of laborers hauling goods around were any indication, his _business's_ growth had more than made up for it.

"Hey Malo," Link answered the greeting as he leaned over on Epona's saddle, "Looks like business is good." He made a show of sweeping his gaze from the huge clearing house he'd found his friend outside of, all the way down the line of workers trailing from it to the distant city gates. The building was built right up against the mountainside across from the city's west entrance, and seemed quite showy for a warehouse. "I have to say, I didn't think I'd see the day when someone built a business outside the city walls."

"Well, we have to lead by example, Link," Malo said, and the way he said it set the stage for his exasperated rant. "This place was supposed to be a traveler's inn and stables. Out here, I could avoid the ridiculous landlord's tax and crowding concerns that keep prices up in the city. I stood to make a killing."

"I'm sensing a 'but' here," Link said, and smiled, getting one of Malo's infamous baby-faced glowers for his trouble.

"Does it look like I'm using it as an inn?" Malo said, quite dryly. "Those vindictive dogs on the landowner's council are choking off my business. They've spread nasty rumors to fan people's fears about monsters and they bribed the city guard to keep their patrols from coming out this far. I've been using perfect service-industry real estate as storage space ever since."

"Seems kind of inconvenient," Link said, watching the workers sweat as they hauled stored goods down the road. It must have been about a mile and a half to Malo's store in the town square from here.

"Yes, but the money I pay these stevedores is going a good way to quiet those ridiculous claims that it's unsafe out here. Besides, the monopoly gang in the city has gone to pains to raise the price of operating and drive me out of business. Even with transportation costs, it's actually cheaper to store it out here. In any case, I doubt you came all the way out to Castle Town just to listen to these robber-baron power-plays. Is something wrong back home?"

"Actually, no." The question sent Link back to the day before. The goodbyes had been nothing short of tearful, although not a single person had seemed surprised by the news that he was leaving on another journey. Apparently, no matter how he tired to hide or suppress it, everyone had at least somewhat noticed that he wasn't meant to spend his life as an overqualified rancher. Ilia… hadn't shown up. "Although I do have these for you," Link tossed him a wad of letters from his family, "This is a personal call. I've decided to come and collect on my investment."

"Oh! So you're—" Malo stopped, giving him the less-glum stare that passed as his 'happy' look. "I always knew you'd never be able to stick it out in Ordon."

"So I've been hearing," Link rolled his eyes. Epona pawed the dirt and whinnied, and he gave her a pat to calm her.

"Well, you're in luck!" Malo assured him, "The item I dug up for you just came in the other day. Come on around back with me." He lifted a small megaphone out of nowhere and suddenly shouted, "HEY JIM!" A sturdy teenage boy dashed up in no time and made with an exaggerated, but still sincere subservience to the imperious little tycoon. "Link, you leave Epona with Jim, you can be my stable's first customer."

'Around back' turned out to be complicated, what with the building's back wall being flush with the mountainside. Link was really starting to wonder what was up when Malo unlocked a storage-shed looking door in the side of the inn and revealed an unexpected down-stairway. At the bottom of the rough-cut steps, a rather cavernous natural grotto had been converted into a specialty store-room. Malo went rooting through a few boxes, and finally came up with something in a large bundle.

"You wouldn't believe the trouble my agent had getting a hold of this, Link," Malo began, in the tone of someone expecting one hell of a thank-you. "Travel time alone made expedience problematic. But with the kind of money I was paying him, you _always_ get results. Here you go: one composite-recurve bow, courtesy of the hill-tribes of the eastern steppes of Chet-Youn." He held it out. "Authorities on the subject claim that this type is the finest bow on the continent, and specialized for horse-archery to boot. Just remember, it's not a long bow, and it's _definitely_ not a magic artifact of a bygone era. You're not going to get the same range that you used to."

Link accepted the bundle and unwrapped it without further ado. What he found was incredibly strange to his eyes, but just the sight of it filled him with an inexplicable elation. Something in him recognized a master-crafted weapon, even though he'd never personally seen one of this type before. Of course, he'd had a natural instinct about violent tools since he was old enough to lift them.

The bow itself was a mottled affair of wood and other, less obvious things, all layered together in an incredibly intricate design. Unstrung as it was, it looked like someone had tried to make a model of the letter 'W' by gluing together different layers of whatever was on hand. He experimentally bent the two ends where the string would go, and was shocked to find nothing like tension in them.

"Hey, what's this now?" Link barked, even as his guts started talking to him again. He immediately knew that it was fine, he was just doing it wrong—but he didn't _know_ how he knew that. It had been the same for everything from paring knives to halberds, though he rarely came across the later before he started traveling. In any case, it was natural that he'd make that particular mistake at first—while the hero's bow had been recurved as well, it was enchanted, and never needed to be unstrung. How would he have known?

"You've got it _backwards_, genius," Malo told him, obviously having been waiting for his opportunity to lord his knowledge over his friend, "that's why it's called 'recurve.'"

Link, who'd come to the same conclusion a second ago but didn't feel like arguing with Malo, didn't hesitate to bend the bow the other way, trying to straighten the 'W' into a 'V.' It was hard as hell, and a slow, manic smile spread across Link's face, like a miser who'd just noticed that the rock he'd tripped on was solid gold. "I need a bowstring, Malo, and I mean _right_ _now_."

"Ah, about that," Malo said, digging through another crate, "with the kind of draw-poundage you specified, I figured you'd go through strings like crazy, so I sprang for the good stuff." He made a successful sound and held out a bit of something that looked like piano-wire with loops on the ends. "This bowstring was bespelled to never wear down, and is also supposed to give the arrow a little bit of extra 'kick.' Sure, it was expensive, but you make it up on the working lifespan. Besides, it's still cheaper than paying you what you're due for dividends on that investment capital you gave me."

Link didn't have anything to say to that, he just retrieved the bowstring and examined the bow, planning the monumental task of bending it back over itself to be strung.

"You know, they say that there's very little in this world trickier than stringing one of those," Malo commented idly as he watched in rapt attention. "It takes special training just for a bow with a draw-poundage in the average range, and yours is _way_ past average."

Link said nothing, but placed the bow on the ground with one foot on the grip. Looping one end of the string on its catch, he grabbed the other end and hauled with every muscle in his body. There was a sound of protest from the weapon as its materials were tested for the first time, but it was indeed master-crafted, and probably could have dulled a saw-blade. For an instant, Malo was sure Link would lose his grip before he finished and cut his hand apart on the string, or run out of steam before he looped the other hook, but then there was a twang as the bowstring pulled tight, and Link let go with the slightest sigh. He picked up the bow and held it up to admire his handy-work, and Malo looked stunned. The bow, now inverted, still looked like a 'W,' but was now much flatter and had smoother curves.

"Arrows." Link said. He had a dangerous look in his eye, but Malo had seen worse, and took the opportunity to taunt him. He held out some arrows he'd had in the same crate, but managed to snatch them away when an unsuspecting Link reached for them.

"Ten for five rupees, only at Malo-mart!" Malo was terribly amused with himself, but Link just reached into his belt and pitched a blue rupee onto the crate Malo was standing on. Malo couldn't help but follow the glinting rupee, and when he looked up again, his hand was quite empty. Link knelt down and stuck the arrow ten-pack point-first into the sandy grotto floor, and before Malo could say a word, he'd readied the first one.

"What-?" Malo managed to get out, before Link drew slowly back on the string. The bow made a terrible creaking noise as its arms bent ever further backward, bending along different stress areas than the reversed-curve that had been so difficult for Link to manage, even with his whole body. That was the secret of the bow's revolutionary design, because it lent acres of extra strength to a fairly short weapon. Still, Malo had read the specifications, and that Link could draw that string back further than an inch boggled his mind. Link aimed and fired, then drew and fired two more times almost too quickly for the eye to follow. There was a terrible _crack_, and Malo looked at the far wall, which was the solid stone of the mountain. The three arrows were in a perfect horizontal row, embedded into the rock.

"U-uh-unbelievable!" Malo shouted, skittering across the room to get a closer look. The force of the flying arrows had driven them into the hard rock, the arrows themselves splintering and cracking from the counter-force. "This is… incredible! Link, do you know what that thing would do to a living creature?"

"At this range, it would give you a new way to see things behind them," Link said, his bemused smile and distant tone giving him the sense of a man in love. "I'd say it could penetrate quarter-inch steel at a hundred paces, _easily_. Give an un-armored man a new orifice at three times that." He looked up at his young friend, "Good work!"

"Link…" Malo looked grave, "You never cease to amaze me. You know I wanted to have one custom-made for you?" he started a story, obviously referring to the bow, "but then I found out that it takes at least a year, _just_ for the glue to set properly. But they don't usually even make bows in the draw you asked for anyway," 'because most human beings couldn't hope to use such a weapon,' went unsaid. "I was about to give up when my agent heard about one; it had been made as a joke, and was called the 'unusable bow.' Guess what you're holding."

"That's great Malo," Link said, obviously not catching the little guy's gravity as he smiled happily at his newest acquisition. This wasn't the weapon of the 'Hero,' it was _Link's_ weapon, all of his own. That's the way he wanted to face the world: owing nothing to the past, free to walk his own path. "Bow's are fantastic, you know that?"

"Yeah?," Malo said, intrigued by Link's fascinated expression. He'd seen Link with new 'toys' on more than one occasion, but his enthusiasm for the next tool of violence never seemed to wane.

"Well, you know, swords are a weapon of skill. They're intrinsically linked to elite ability, and I can't _help_ but love them the most. A lifetime's learning can make a swordsman unrivaled in combat." Link said, and his voice had an echo of experience Malo usually associated with people three times the warrior's age. "Spears are the opposite—they can make a bunch of talentless mud-booted farmers dangerous with all the training of a long weekend. Various other weapons fall between that range, but a good warbow is the exception." He looked up at Malo, and the pre-pubescent mogul saw a lethal certainty in his eyes. "Arrows don't care how long you spent training with a sword, just like they don't care how much money you spent on your armor or how many bodyguards you have. Whether wielded by a fool or a master, a bow can deal death that evens out most other scales. Of course, in the hands of a _master_," he didn't bother with modesty here, "a bow is a weapon of assassination, _utterly_ unfair."

"Well, that was impressively sanguine," Malo commented, impressed despite himself at the way Link had come to carry himself. Somewhere, somehow, he'd gone from farm boy to hardened veteran. And… there was still more to it than even that, but he couldn't quite describe it.

"So, what can you tell me about armor?" Link changed the subject easily, as though he hadn't just expressed his almost eager attitude toward wholesale butchery, "I find myself suddenly in the market."

"Armor?" Malo asked, shaking off his nebulous concerns as business came up. "Link, I already told you, with the exception of shields, all forms of quality armament are specialty items in Hyrule. Rusl is the only person I can think of in the whole nation who even knows how to forge a sword. Or at least, a sword worth _using_. Our own soldiers import their gear from Ghent, or from Careda just north of there. Frankly, it's really sad."

"Yeah, but I'm sure a person as well-connected as you could—"

"AHHHHH!" a riotous scream suddenly became an entire chorus of screams as a panic bloomed and spread just outside.

"Oh what now?" Malo asked. It was only an odd interruption, until the first ground-shaking explosion nearly knocked them both off their feet.

"Moblins! Run for you lives!" the shout went up, and there was a terrible noise of panicking people all moving the same direction.

"NO!" Malo shouted, freezing in panic as he imagined his investment going up in thoroughly-looted smoke.

"More arrows," Link said, plucking what he had left out of the dirt and dashing up the stairs. He had a look of skewed glee that was just plain frightening.

"Uh—right! I'm sure I've got some…!" Malo was left to shift through crates in a furor as Link emerged into the sunlight. He'd left his sword and shield on Epona, stranding him with nothing but his new baby and bare hands. Of course, for moblins, that much should be overkill.

No sooner had he stepped out of the cellar than did a moblin-trained kargaraok take a snap at his head. The reptilian flying beast would have had him but for some instinct that prompted him to duck, causing the beak to snap down on a few stray hairs and nothing more. As he rolled away, the giant winged stomach pulled out again, flapping its great, leathery wings to hover around ten feet off the ground, eying Link up for another attempt to peck a crater in his skull. Link weathered the gale its wings kicked up and waited for it to strike again.

The stupid animal advertised its attack from a mile away, and Link rolled under it, readying an arrow before he came back to his feet. He barely had to aim at this range, striking it in the head and blasting it backward with the leftover force, nailing the big chicken to the wall of Malo's inn by the arrow through its skull. It jerked reflexively as it died, then went limp.

The ruckus got the attention of quite a crowd, and Link readied another arrow as he spotted them, and then came to his senses and hurried to duck for cover against the corner wall of the inn when he registered the sheer number of them. They were filthy, murderous bullblins, the mask-wearing plague of the Death Mountain foothills and Gerudo Desert, and all areas they could raid from there. In the brief glance he'd gotten, he counted three war-boars, a boar-drawn wagon, and goddesses only knew how many grunts. Kangaraok blood ran down the side of the building and dripped onto his old work shirt as he listened to the approach of at least three of the looters, probably wondering what happened to their pet air-support.

The first one to turn the corner had its windpipe crushed by Link's boot, and before it fell, the one next to it had his knee-cap dislocated by the same foot. The third had just enough time to overcome its surprise and take a slash at Link with its dirk. Link caught its wrist and overpowered it, driving is dirk into the throat of the one clutching its ruined knee. Before it could get its balance back, Link jerked it in the other direction, tripped it into the side wall of the inn, and pinned it face-first to the building with an arrow through its heart. Link looted a scimitar from the one that was still quietly suffocating, executed it with a clean stab, and stuck the blooded blade down the back of his belt. It was time he pressed his advantage.

On the far left of the moblin scrum, two of the boar-rider pairs had dismounted to loot liberally amid the goods scattered by fleeing stevedores. One looked up at him in stupid-eyed surprise as he sprinted from behind the inn, spotted his weapon, and opened its mouth to shout a war-cry. A twang of the bow sent an arrow through his chest and right on to points unknown, his misshapen body tumbling through the dusty road, shattered and holed. The partner turned in shock, then raised a shrieking alarm, and the whole jumble erupted like a kicked ant hill. A half-dozen more looters immediately spotted link, as well as the two that had remained mounted on one of the boars to keep watch.

With a snort and grunt, a one-ton side of pork hopped into a frenzied charge at its master's urging, closing the short distance between them and Link in a few thundering bounds. Link waited until point-blank range, and then holed the boar handler's chest, the arrow going right through and lodging in the skull of the passenger behind him before it even managed to ready its bow. The two corpses rode on as Link dove away from the frenzied boar, which charged unguided into the cliff wall. You could hear the sickening crunch of its skull shattering all the way at the distant city walls. By then, he could feel rather than see the arrows sighting in on him from those crude little moblin bows, and he scrambled for cover behind a tumbled crate stack on the opposite side of the road from the inn, black arrows peppering his tracks.

The other two boar-riders used the distraction caused by their friends to mount up and wheel their steed around. Escape was on their minds, and it was likely they were shouting much the same to the nearby cart-drover in their filthy, incomprehensible language. Glancing out of his cover, Link saw the passenger securing their loot with one hand as it pulled out a distinctive-looking sack with the other, preparing to cover the escape. Link cracked its head open with an arrow that blew it out of its seat, but not before it had opened the sack. Out tumbled half-a-dozen shiny black spheres and a prominent hissing sound filled the air.

Bombs. He'd dropped bombs. Link didn't stop to think, he nailed the first sphere with an arrow before it hit the ground, and the world flashed with hard light. Instantly, a wall of air swept up and slapped Link like a jealous lover, kicking him over into a tumble before he could even _think_ about jumping back into the nearby cover. There was a vague sense of glass shattering and wood flying asunder, and then the world was quiet again. Link sat up, shedding road dust like snow from his head and arms, and surveyed the carnage, eyes sharp for survivors.

Malo's inn was still standing, although it would need new windows. About half of everything that had been lying in the street was gone, but that was fine, because so were the bullblins. The explosion had taken out the riders, scattered the looters, and blown huge splinters of their cart all the way up onto the cliffs above. All that was left was a huge black scorch mark, one smoking hoof, and about three thousand tiny pork cutlets, with odd bits of bone and larger hunks of carcass distributed pretty liberally around. The last boar, dumb beast that it was, had been stunned stiff by the flash and the bang, and tilted over into an unconscious heap as Link watched. Link looked down and considered his one remaining arrow as he scraped himself up and walked idly toward ground zero.

"GRAH!" Link sidestepped without breaking stride as a Bullblin went for his kidneys with a dagger from its hiding place behind the same crates he'd used. As it skidded by off balance, he grabbed it in a chokehold with his free hand and broke its neck one-handed. Stupid creatures, to shout before a sneak attack like that. Not that a smarter ambush would have worked either, with the deadly song that sang through Link's veins. This combat was like a drug, and the months of withdrawal he'd suffered in Ordon only made it that much sweeter to be back.

The snap had been messy, incomplete, and the little devil twitched and jerked at Link's feet. So he shot it. The arrow went through its chest and buried halfway into the ground beneath it, but at least the bullblin stopped moving. For a long moment, there was no sound but the wind. The silence was like the time between two ticks of a clock, and Link felt it stretch out for a brief eternity. It was broken when a wagon wheel clattered to the ground and bounced to a loud, rolling stop, having only just finished its steep ballistic journey after the explosion. With the spell of calm broken, Link could finally hear the cheering.

From the direction of Castle Town, a great, distant roar filled the air and echoed across the bridge to the rocky cliffs above Malo's inn. Link turned back and saw people lining every parapet, with late-going refugees of the attack standing on the bridge adding their own voices to the uproar of adulation. A muscle ticked in Link's face, and he turned away from the lot of them.

In front of him, what was left of the scavengers after the bomb shrapnel was piecing itself together, and many considered Link with murderous, beady little eyes. But then they looked again. He was not physically impressive, but somehow managed to cast a shadow that blotted out the light. With him as the lens, the cheers sweeping down from the city were like the roar of the ocean, a great wave cresting up, preparing to slam down and crush them. They were shortly trembling, and then Link drew the scimitar he'd acquired.

The last of the bullblins was running for its life before Link had taken his first step, and he spat in disgust at their cowardice. The least they could do was stand and face the consequences of the murder and theft they sowed so freely. Cursing his lack of ammunition, he chucked the scimitar at the slowest runner, the unbalanced weapon twirling and wobbling in flight, but still managing to clock his target on the skull, if only hilt-first.

Around then, Malo showed up, bundle of arrows in hand, baby face unreadable as he surveyed the damage and the cheering crowds. People were rushing up, and Link didn't really want to deal with that.

"Malo." Link got his little friend's attention. "One hundred arrows, sixty bombs, and dry provisions for three weeks. Have 'em all at the fountain outside the south exit tonight."

"But—"

"Try to dig up some armor too—something light. I want the best mix of durability and mobility you can find, you know my sizes."

"But Link—"

"Here's an advance!" Link shouted, already running toward the stables. He tossed a small pouch he'd pulled from his belt, and as it hit the ground, one of the several orange rupees inside spilled out. "Thanks again for the bow, man!"

"But Link, what about—" Malo stopped himself this time, because Link was already gone and away. The next moment, he was thundering toward the west tunnel on Epona, leaving the city and its advancing horde of amazed bystanders in the dust.

Malo huffed, and then retrieved and counted the rupees. First things first. Only then did he turn around to meet the wave of rubberneckers and returning stevedores. He quickly organized a clean-up, declining to comment on anything to anyone, and thought about what he'd have to do to get what Link asked for. In classic Link style, the jerk had saved his skin _yet_ _again_, and didn't even wait around for a thank-you.

**West Hyrule Field, Hyrule Province**

When he was safely out into the wilderness, Link reigned Epona back and let her go off at her own pace. The gentle rocking motion was soothing to a boy who'd grown up in a saddle, and it helped him think. This was important, because, in his own estimation, he had much to think _about_. He got the same pensive feeling every time he eluded people who might ask questions he wasn't sure he could answer.

Releasing the reigns despite the turbulence of Epona's run, he stared at the back of his left hand, his mind's eye superimposing the image of the Triforce of Courage burned into his memory during the duel with Gannondorf. No one had ever told him much about the thing—just as no one had ever bothered to give him half an explanation about any part of that 'fated journey.' Midna had led him around by the nose, and he'd simply been expected to 'make with the heroism.' Well that was all well and good—it had been enough to save Hyrule, after all—but it left him in a hell of a lurch now.

Link's questions were manifold. Had he been chosen because he already had the qualities the Triforce appreciated, or was his entire ability a product of this invasive force twined into his soul? What about his protective instinct, or his personality? Just how much were these impulses he'd been feeling truly altering the path of his free will? And of course, how far would it all go? What the hell had he done to Ilia?

He hadn't even noticed how he'd been re-formed until he'd found he could never again fit into his old life, but now that he _had_ noticed, he realized he couldn't trust any aspect of his own personality to be.. well… his. Had he really always been as gung-ho about combat as he was today, and as callous with life? He'd never faced these kinds of choices as a farm hand, and so he was forever bound to knowing himself only as a divinely-invested warrior in these situations. It gave him very little to go on when he tried to decide if he should be worried about his own behavior of late. Rusl said he'd seen Link's restlessness coming for years—what if he'd always been heading down this path, and the Triforce simply chose him as a vessel it would have to do the least work empowering? He just didn't know, and his own ignorance was infuriating.

Almost without realizing it, his hand found its way to the letter he'd gotten from the Royal Administration. As simple as that, Link remembered that there was at least one person who could give him some answers. He doubted she'd truck many questions from a guy who'd have to lie on his belly to be any further from her on the social spectrum, but perhaps if he humored her request for help, she'd give him what answers she had. The brief words he'd had with her during their collusion of fate had impressed him with her generosity, so it wasn't impossible.

Earlier he'd actually half-decided to show up, just to blow her off. He'd _done_ his time for princess and country, and now his path should be his own. He was sure he could find ways to improve Hyrule without being a lapdog of the state, and so use his every talent to indirectly aid Ordon as Rusl had suggested. Now that he thought about it again, he wasn't so sure he'd get a choice here, not if he wanted those answers.

In any case, his mind was made up, and he wheeled Epona around to the southeast as he began the afternoon-long journey of meeting up with Malo again. If he was going to meet royalty, he wanted to be good and ready.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda sat back in her wonderfully comfortable chair and stared at her door. At least, her eyes stared at where her door _would_ be, if she could see it in the pitch black of her darkened office. Her actual _attention_ was wrapped up in the knotted mess of her many separate avenues of thought, their simultaneous operation having gotten out of hand again. Believe it or not, it was difficult to manage when you suddenly had three independent reasoning centers, and she hadn't quite gotten the hang of it.

Because of her failure, even with all the lights out and guard-enforced silence all around her, she was still only about ten seconds from another crushing migraine in the series she'd encountered since her mind had started to expand. Each headache was worst than the last, and the most recent one had brought her to her knees, a breath from unconsciousness. She'd never asked to have a brain with enough loops in it to allow for pretzel twists, and as she strove to stave off the impending agony, she got rather petulant about it.

It wasn't _fair_. She hadn't chosen to be born the princess, and now she was caged into a world of never-ending toil. She couldn't help it, her mind never wanted to stop working, and neither would her heart let her give less than her all for the country. But… her all had become something huge, and the strain of maintaining it… enormous. Locked away in private, no one around to whom she had to impress with regal invulnerability, the temptation to cry out some of her tension was incredibly strong, and she didn't know if she could handle that right now. It was all just proof that even though her wits seemed to go on forever lately, she could still find their end when things got bad.

Reanalds' plotting left her unable to concentrate, and soon idle in the throes of unfocused worry. It was always _worst_ when she was idle. As long as she had something to work on, she could keep her brain chugging merrily away and ignore the many things in herself that had been disturbing her. When she had no task, she had no distraction from the things she didn't want to face. The problem with being as smart as she was getting was that she couldn't help but notice and quantify the changes overtaking her, nor truly ignore how chillingly far from normal they were taking her. Forget about taking solace in denial—only distraction worked, even temporarily.

When it got to the point where she was using logic theory and mathematics to define how far she'd digressed from human, she fell into a mood like the one gripping her now. This near-despair was what happened to her when all of her shiny new faculties got stuck on a problem she lacked the data to solve, and began to sail through loops of speculation and theory that quickly became knotted cranial agony. For her, the classic problem question, the one that had trapped her into knotting loops, was: what is happening to me? About the only thing she knew with any confidence was the source, and though she'd exhausted every resource at her disposal, she'd been able to do little with that particular lead.

After centuries on end, solid records were hard to come by, and the many oral traditions were vague and self-evidently unreliable. It rankled her that even with all the authority and influence of the crown, she still couldn't find out much more about her peoples' deities and their works than what was available to the average person. It was enough to put 'cultural renaissance' a ways down on her list of things to do, all by itself. She amused herself for a moment with the thought of creating the post of 'royal theological archeologist.'

"Your Majesty?" The door creaked open, letting in an eye-watering beam of light, and a page whispered into the darkness. He was clearly upset to be the one to interrupt her rest. "Minister Auru is here to see you."

"Is it urgent?" Zelda asked, wincing at the way the words vibrated her super-sensitized skull.

"I believe I may be able to help, Your Majesty," Auru spoke into the darkness as he stepped in behind the page and ushered him out. He shut the door and plunged the room back into safe, cool blackness. "I bring news."

"News? News is good," Zelda perked up immediately at the promise that someone would feed her bottomless appetite for new data. "I take it my spies have reported in?"

"That and more, though I'll leave it for later." Auru's voice smiled, and Zelda noted in idle bemusement that she could precisely locate him in the darkness by tracking the differences in air currents caused by his breathing. Odd, the things her head could get up to, when she dared to leave it to its own devices. "For the moment, I believe I might have an idea about pulling you out of this funk. You see, it's occurred to me that these headaches never bother you while you are sufficiently occupied with one subject or another."

"Oh, you noticed that, did you?" Zelda would probably have erupted with suspicion if it had been anyone but Auru to divine the nature of her weakness. As it was, she was almost pleased to have another opinion. She never knew if she could trust hers anymore.

"Quite so, yes," Auru said again, as he took a seat opposite from her, feeling around blindly in the darkness until he found the chair. "I just wanted to take this opportunity to say: the landed gentry are planning to force you to sign a bill of noble's rights."

"WHAT?" Zelda leapt up out of her chair and slammed both palms on her desk, a flash of a spell igniting every candle in the room and flooding them with a sudden bright light. "_Heads will roll_!" she spoke with a cold, bloody assurance.

"I was lying," Auru told her, as a sort of subdued, geriatric version of 'NOT!' Zelda stalled immediately, the simultaneous planning of assassinations, land seizures, and the public relations campaign that would stave off civil unrest all going to pieces behind her eyes. She immediately realized what he'd done, and she was quite cross.

"That was a dirty trick," She informed him calmly as she took her seat again.

"And like all the best dirty tricks, it worked beautifully," Auru said, sensing her annoyance and smiling as he saw it tempered by a grudging gratitude. "How's you're head?"

"Hmph… better," Zelda admitted. Part of her mind continued to formulate a contingency plan for the mass rebellion of her nobles, if not quite as furiously as before. Another devised terrible punishments to visit upon tricky old ministers. "Do you actually think the nobles might band together and seize power?" Zelda asked, interested in his opinion. At this time, decentralizing Hyrule's leadership into the hands of the short-sighted was perhaps the worst thing that could happen if they wanted to survive as a sovereign state. In the same breath, her ability to counter such a move might never be lower than it was now.

"It is possible, with men like our Earl and the merchant elite in Castle Town," Auru allowed, "but not likely. Hyrule's monarchy is dearly loved, and you in particular are a national treasure. Any move against you would have to be incredibly discreet, lest even the most humble farm-hand rise up and 'ask' their 'betters' what they think they're doing. I don't believe any of the disloyal lords are terribly well acquainted with subtlety." Zelda nodded, agreeing with him as she remembered Reanalds' bragging eyes.

"I sometimes feel," She sighed, looking contemplative, "that it would be safer to be feared."

"Oh?" Auru perked up, startled, "that's an odd thing to say."

"The love of my people is certainly flattering," Zelda continued, knowing it would be impossible to patronize the old scholar by explaining her reasons, "and I have no intention other than to strive for all my people's happiness and safety, but filthy men too often take such as a sign of weakness. Somehow, they assume that they can act against me without reprisal because I don't openly abuse those beneath me. If I were feared as a dangerous tyrant, at least it would discourage such rebellious men from the delusion that I'll hesitate to deal harshly with _them_."

"Should I take this as a statement of your intent to change policy?" Auru asked, feigning diffidence. In truth, he was on tenterhooks as he watched the princess think, apparently on the edge of declaring heavy-handed dictatorship. She was good in a bone-deep way that could never be shaken, but the force augmenting her meteoric leadership was an ice cold slave of logic.

He could already see it in her policies—from her frequent use of her grandfather's spy network to her blithe disregard for the few standing regulations on royal power. There was no injustice too large to perpetrate, if that was what it took. _Nothing_. Of course, either way would lead to the security and strengthening of Hyrule, it was just that one path had the trail of corpses, and the other was damn close to impossible.

"Not yet," Zelda said, honestly as far as he could tell. "There's no call to rush out 'the stick' as long as 'the carrot' alone still keeps the children in line. Time enough for that if things ever do go bad. Anyway, I believe you had more news for me?"

"Very well then, on to the next order of business." Auru found himself glad to change the subject. In a way, he was relieved that she seemed to have a stomach for the nasty side of power, because it was a sad, utter necessity for a strong ruler. He just didn't want to see the beautiful child of his beautiful queen fall to the trappings of convenience inherent to tyranny. "Your spies have made great progress on investigating the Earl's gift."

"Do tell," Zelda commanded. Auru did. Zelda colored, first with embarrassment, and then with fury. When she'd finished exhausting her lengthy vocabulary of critical words upon the filthy man's entire lineage, she set her mind to cooking up a counter-plot. She'd quite forgotten about Auru.

The old minister occupied himself by watching the barely perceptible aura of energy crackle around his monarch's petite silhouette. He was certain that she had no idea what she looked like when she really focused her mind and pushed it to its limit, and equally certain that she was clueless to how much he lived to see it. Something about that energy spoke to him, attracting him like a moth to a candle flame. He was too much aware of his own age to dream that it was a sexual attraction, but it was strikingly similar. The feeling completely circumvented his reason, exactly the way it had every other time he'd noticed the aura since that first time only days ago.

As it weighed more and more upon his mind, he probed a few trustworthy people, such as Ashei and a few of the pages, and quickly discovered it was not a phenomenon the others had noticed. As far as he knew, he was the only one who could see it. There was little doubt in his mind that it was a manifestation of the Triforce, but what kind? Why _him_?

Zelda's eyes saw nothing when she introverted to fully coordinate her mind, and Auru couldn't resist the opportunity to stare into them while she wouldn't notice. The crystal pools were the wellsprings from which her fulminating aura emerged, and when he gazed into them, they seemed to suck him in. Auru was overcome by the feeling that he was gazing out onto a plain that went on for miles, expanding into the horizon. That was when the vision came.

A scepter and crown over the Triforce: the symbol of the royal family since time immemorial. The image filled his mind, and his heart was filled with a simple, shining knowledge. He immediately understood a history of service that reached back a thousand lifetimes through countless women, each bound to serve as Hyrule's guiding light; protector of the land, the people, but most importantly, of the legacy bequeathed by the goddesses at genesis. It was a harrowing experience that left him feeling old and terrified, which was nothing compared to how he would feel when he finally discovered the Triforce symbol carved into the flesh over his heart in glowing gold lines.

"I think I've got it—Auru?" Zelda looked up to find him staring at her with an odd look on his face, and he hurried to break into geriatric coughing. For the moment, she was none the wiser to what had just happened, her blossoming shrewdness containing a blind spot for her trusted friends. Somehow, Auru managed to keep his advice flowing until he could excuse himself without arousing concern. As soon as he was out of eyeshot, he nearly collapsed, and shivered all the way back to his bed.

_Something_ had just happened, though he doubted he would ever know just what. She was already sensitive about the abilities she was developing; he would not concern the princess with this on top of the rest. Especially not when she would shortly be confronted with the Hero, and all the new tactical considerations his arrival would entail. As he imagined the endless progression of other things she'd soon face with her unique gifts, considering that she was almost certainly the only one who could guide them through it all successfully, Auru wondered if he'd ever be willing to burden her with it.

Not for the first time, he reaffirmed his pledge to guard her and teach her, the pledge he'd made to her mother so long ago. This was an era that was being defined, however indirectly, by the hands of the gods and goddesses themselves. He was just an old man, but if he could serve Hyrule and its golden children, he would dedicate himself to his last breath. But first… he needed some sleep.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

Not much to say about this one. When I wrote this I had just watched a special on dark age weapons technology detailing the many deadly wonders of the composite recurve bow used by the mongols to carve out history's largest empire. I thought I could fudge the facts a little and wind up with the fantasy equivalent of the Dirty Harry Magnum, and I feel it worked out really well. I got to write my first fight scene here, and this was good because I feel like I do those better than I do anything else in writing. Fight scenes make me wish I was an artist so I could portray the over-the-top violence I see in my mind with greater precision and brevity in the form of a comic book. This is the first chapter where I started seriously looking into the canon background material, so I correctly identified the monsters by name. Just to note, I know that the lizardmen are called lizofolos in the canon, I just find that name criminally stupid and refuse to use it. Before this I had fudged pretty everything but the names of the characters in Link's village, which in retrospect, wasn't nearly important enough for me to spend so much time looking up. Even this much research proved pretty pointless, as within another few chapters, Link leaves Hyrule and this becomes a work of almost totally original fiction.

Here's a note for writers of serialized fiction: you will always come up with great ideas to define your whole work well after publishing many chapters with those ideas not incorporated. As an example, I didn't really devise the idea of Zelda's tripartate mind until this chapter. How do you address this problem without constant, jarring ret-cons? Well, you can't, not really. Fortunately I'd left myself some play by giving Zelda an 'instinct' to greater mental acuity that was easily expanded into this fascinating power. Double-fortunate, I got the idea before I got any deeper into the story than this.


	4. Recognition

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 4: Recognition**

**Reanalds Mansion Gates, Hyrule Province**

Link approached the foot of the outlook plateau at a measured walk, Epona trailing behind without having to be led. Looking up into the late-morning sky, he could just spot the profile of Lord Reanalds' summer mansion perched atop its modest peak like a jewel on a stony crown. There was enough space up there for the building and an expansive, greenly-growing garden, and then cliffs fell off sharply on all sides except the front, which descended erratically through a series of man-made cutbacks and carved stairways to the vast, wild plains of southern Hyrule province. It had to be a pain to get supplies up there without any cart-accessible paths, but it was also surprisingly defensible for a noble's pleasure mansion.

That thought made Link consider Lord David Reanalds, Earl of Ordonia. Despite living on his land for years, Link had never met, nor even seen the man. Honestly, he couldn't have picked the fellow out of a crowd to save his life. The world of Hyrule's upper-crust was a closed book to a farm-hand who'd taken up adventuring. Indeed, the only aristocrat he'd spent any length of time with was Midna, and if she had been any kind of indicator, 'the other half' was just as prone to mistakes, pettiness, and selfishness as the rest of humanity—assuming the twilli could be counted among their number. The same went for the traits of greatness, and Princess Zelda immediately sprang to his mind. _That_ was nobility—a man could really believe that creature was a wholly different breed of person. If nobles were all like _that_, he could understand why they ran the country.

As he rounded a last rocky outcropping, Link spotted a manned gatehouse right where he figured the bottom of the stairway must be. With a sigh, he turned and pulled some of his supplies off Epona's saddle and urged her off, and she obediently cantered away to graze. It was an old routine, and he had no fear she'd be unable to find him again when he called. He pitied the poor fool that tried to steal that horse, and any wildlife would know better than to tangle with a young, healthy charger, or that wildlife would soon be taught to respect those hooves.

It took mere moments for him to attach his sword and shield, bow and quiver, bomb bags, and supply backpack to the harness of his new armor, although he did have a spot of trouble with the cloak. He was on his way toward the gates soon enough though, and took a moment to admire this latest acquisition as he walked.

Malo had outdone himself. When Link had first seen the mish-mash of dull-looking metal in the crate waiting for him south of Castle town, he'd been less than happy. No one piece of it matched any other piece, and it looked a terrible mess to assemble all that. He'd missed his elegantly effective, visually understated hero's armor immediately. And then, something had clicked in his brain, and he'd done a complete mental reversal as the light came on in his head.

Forty minutes of work with the pile of leather harnessing that had come part-in-parcel with the disarray of metal was all it took, and even that was only because he'd been working by lamplight. The time was spent sorting and fitting mostly, and he discarded half of what Malo had turned up as too heavy or too conspicuous. The finished product he now wore was not pretty in any sense, but the functionality he'd tested and re-tested couldn't be denied. It was a significant improvement over the light chain mail of his hero's cloths, and even better from Link's perspective, it made him look nothing at all like a divinely anointed hero. There was metal, but its tacky weatherproofing coat meant it didn't gleam, and the patchwork of materials had an undeniably swarthy quality that lent itself more to the man who robbed you than the one who caught him.

The trick to the composite armor that had danced into his brain out of nowhere was the _layering_. The first component of what he'd assembled was a tight layer of thick, padded brown leather reinforced with strips of jointed steel on the shoulders and along the sides of his chest, and a set of matching armored greaves that went over his pants. The padding was skin-tight and shaped to stretch around him as he maneuvered, only slightly more cumbersome than a tight suit, but wasn't much protection by itself. Added to that, however, was a second-hand shirt of top-quality chain mail, easily the equal of that woven into his hero's greens and enough to stop a blade cold if he caught it correctly. As an extra precaution, he'd used cord and thongs to reinforce the mail with rigid bands of steel plate at the shoulders and chest, as well as a few other places. That had taken a while, because he'd had to balance protection with mobility there more than with anything else. A final, very light leather harness went over it all to grip it down and keep it tight, ensuring nothing would rattle around when he had to be sneaky.

After layering came accessorizing, and here Link had lucked out, because Malo knew some people who knew some people. Somehow, to Link's delight, Malo had managed to dig up a set of extremely fine fingerless gauntlets, their leather supple enough at the palms to be no impediment to his grip, and yet lined along the back with a layer of plated steel thick enough to block a swordstrike and reinforced at the knuckles for punching. The boots were also an excellent find. They came up to his knees in the horse-warrior's style, and were layered with steel bars and plated toes. They were of the highest quality in plated leather, and had even been broken-in by their previous owner.

Finally, making some allowances for travel considerations he'd become painfully familiar with, he'd thrown on a warm, waterproof grey tunic of rather cheap, unadorned fabric and donned a hefty brown cloak that bore a strong resemblance to an anti-weather tarp. It was all quite filthy already.

Link was getting close to the gates, and the two men posted outside it were watching him approach with closed, unfriendly expressions. Each armsman was leaning on a spear and wore a sword on his hip, along with a suit of light chain mail under a tunic bearing a fancy uniform coat of arms. Link eventually recognized the blue-striped black fleur as the same one worn by the tax collector who came to Ordon once a season. "_Well_," he thought to himself as he ignored the dirty looks he was getting, "_at least I know I'm in the right place_."

"Greetings!" Link shouted out loud, raising both hands in a signal of good faith. The two guards, apparently hoping he'd just pass them by on the rutted dirt road, came to guarded stances as he closed in on them. He wasn't making any kind of secret of the fact that he was armed, but when he raised his hands, his cloak drew back and revealed the none-too-modest arsenal hanging beneath it. It was enough to put anyone on edge, and _these_ guys were trained security guards.

"You just stand right were you are stranger," said the guard on the left, and then stood a little more at ease when Link actually did stop. "If you know what's good for you, you'll turn around and just keep walking down that road, son. You don't want any of the trouble we could make for you—now git!"

"Now hold on there," Link said, shrugging off the man's open threat, "I have legitimate business with some people staying in that oversized barn back there. If you'll just send someone to tell Old Man Auru that—"

Link was cut off by the storm of laughter that erupted loud and strong from the two guards the moment they realized what he was saying. He just let them yuk it up and get it out of their system, frowning all the while. It didn't so much anger him as it did really get on his nerves; he had much better things he could be doing right now than humoring these imbeciles by pretending they could stop him from going where he wanted.

"Now you listen to me stranger," the other guard said when he'd finished laughing, "I'll allow that you've got an odd sense of humor, but now would be a good time for you to quit while you're ahead." He tapped the butt of his spear on the ground and loosened himself up in a futile attempt at intimidation. "The Lord is hosting a big-ass shindig up on the hill, and the last thing we're gonna do is stick our necks out by bugging one of his big-wig friends on the word of a long-eared scum-stain like you. Now _scram_, kid, you're bothering me."

"Are you done?" Link asked, his arms crossed over his chest in a gesture of waning patience. "Because I really do need to get in there and chat with some folks. I don't know if there's some official process where I could get word up the hill—"

"Are you deaf, boy?" The first guard asked, brandishing his spear. "We're not going to ask nicely next time!"

"Oh for Din's sake!" Link tossed his hands up in a hopeless gesture, "I'm really not interested in arguing with you two. Here," he reached into his cloak, "I have this letter, if you'd just—"

"HEY!" both guards scrambled to level their spears on him the moment he reached under his cloak. Link froze as he found a pair of five-inch points quivering in his face. He stared down the two spear shafts, sighed, and rolled his eyes.

"You two be careful where you point those pig-stickers," Link said, in an even tone that was more admonitory and condescending than threatening. "You might hurt somebody. Now, I came here by request of some rather important people, and I'm giving you this perfectly reasonable opportunity to do your job and connect me with them."

"Why you—!" Link tracked the spear as the second guard whipped it around to wallop him with the shaft. The attack was telegraphed and clumsy, but would still have knocked his teeth out if he hadn't swayed back from the strike. The wild swing continued on its path, uninterrupted until it cracked his partner in the hands instead. The first guard bellowed and dropped his weapon, cursing virulently in shock and agony. The spearman's jaw dropped as he realized what he'd done, and his eyes filled with a new layer of fury as he leveled the point at Link, fully on guard now.

"What?" Link asked, not having to pretend his innocence. He hadn't even tried to draw a weapon, and he didn't intend to.

"Jim, ma' hand's broken Jim!" the first guard was keeled over cradling his hand. "Get that punk for me!"

"You're leaving right now!" Jim told Link, the threat having elevated from a beating to outright murder. Link's expression still hadn't budged from unimpressed annoyance.

"I'm not going anywhere until I've spoken with the people who called for me. I'm sorry about your friend, but—"

"Last chance stranger!" he said, but before Link could even try to calm him down, his injured friend took the situation out of both their hands. He turned and drew his sword in one unexpected motion, but Link was reading his movements the instant he heard the hiss of metal freeing from scabbard. Thus, while the other guard was stunned by his friend's attack, Link spun to his side and watched the wild sword-charge miss spectacularly. The charging man hadn't made any allowances for missing, and tripped into a ditch with a wet sound and a spray of mud.

"Tom?" the guard who was still brandishing his spear leaned around Link to see his friend lying unconscious, belly-up in a mud puddle. He suddenly remembered the threatening stranger he'd been covering, and drew in a breath to shout for help. Link caught wind of that well in advance, and made a snap decision. Before he'd finished his sharp breath, Link had rolled inside his guard and buried his fist into the man's gut.

Link did _not_ give him his best shot—not by far. Though he wasn't consciously aware of his own strength as it stacked against humans just yet, a restraining impulse compelled him to pull his punch back to about 1/3 of what it could have been. Thus, the guard felt the metal joists of Link's gauntlet bury into his sternum like a battering ram, and _merely_ passed out. He did _not_ have his chest cracked like an eggshell and his heart pulverized into quivering meat-paste, such as a full-force, expertly-placed, steel-clad punch from a warrior like Link could have managed. Rather than expire, he exhaled his breath in a quietly agonized wheeze and crumbled to the ground in a heap of armor.

Link considered the two unconscious men distastefully, unused to perpetrating violence on other humans, although this barely qualified on the scale he'd come to use. He didn't like it one bit, especially considering the fact that they'd never stood a chance, and probably wouldn't have had the guts to really hurt him, even if it had been possible. He could tell just by watching them fight that these two were weekend-warriors at best, out here in front of this mansion drawing a wage and getting what kicks they could with the authority that came with it.

Come to think of it, that was rather a lot to draw from merely watching them bumble with their weapons, but the more he considered it, the more he was sure of himself. With a shake of his head, Link picked both men's pockets, turning up the gate key, a handful of rupees, and a deck of Hylian playing cards. Pocketing the money and cards as an 'annoying Link' tax, Link walked up the path and let himself into the mansion's ground-level complex.

Immediately inside, he passed a gatehouse on his right and a grove of decorative trees and shrubs blocking the yard on his left. A few more steps up the wide cart-path let Link into a sort of courtyard, and the thunderous sound of voices and unmistakable smell of horses both rolled down around the corner. A circumspect glance around told Link he wouldn't be getting in this way.

Apparently, the two fools outside hadn't been kidding about the party, because here was evidence in droves. Down beneath the stairway leading up the cliff side was a large stable and the main courtyard complex, and it was currently packed to the gills with ritzy-looking carriages. Of course, along with the carriages of wealthy folk came the quarterhorses, the drivers, and the armed bodyguards. The human elements of that equation were currently packed into and all around the complex's undersized guard barracks having their own sort of party while the nobs cavorted up on the hill. Not one was on guard, and most of them appeared to be at least slightly drunk, but Link would have to go right through them to reach the stairs.

Now, he had little doubt he could blend in if he tried, even without wearing a coat of arms, but there was a _second_ guarded gate between the ground complex and the stairs, probably meant to keep the riff-raff out in the yard from wandering up to their betters. If he was challenged there, there would be no way to keep the whole lot of them off his back. The prospect of kicking his way through the whole crowd held no fear for Link, but the idea of massacring them disgusted him in an abstract way. Even with a crowd as rough as that, by sheer odds, he was bound to kill an innocent person.

Essentially, he just wasn't in the mood for a workout, and taking that many men without killing any definitely qualified as exercise. Killing people was easy—not killing them was a massive exertion of razor-fine control. Those two guards would never know how lucky they were that his combat instinct sensed such an absolute lack of real threat from them, and he'd been able to maintain the state of mind that automatically refrained from precision killing blows. Besides all that, he couldn't imagine it would endear him to his hosts if he broke their stooges before they could take them all back home.

Another thought occurred to Link, and he turned back to take care of some loose ends. A moment later, he came back in through the gate dragging both guards, one hand on each of their collars. A quick search turned up a storage shed built out behind the gatehouse of the outermost gate, the entire path there well out of sight of the courtyard. That was where Link deposited his two foolish friends. He then sat down on one of the many pots inside to consider his next move.

While he thought, he discovered the small table where off-shift guards would play cards and slack off, and more importantly, he found it supplied. Extremely fine food, certainly looted from the excess being served at the party, as well as a large jug both came quickly to hand. After snacking a bit, he discovered that the jug was filled with a light, fruity beer, and he tucked it and a kerchief full of food into his bag for later.

At length, lacking anything better to do, he stood up and began to search at random through the room's stock of crates. There were plenty of repair supplies for patching the decorative brick walls or replacing the steel spikes of the gates themselves, but not a whole lot to work with. He was about to give up on that too when he came across a box that looked as though it had never been opened. He cracked it, and inside was a huge coil of fresh rope and some wicked looking iron spines on a ring. A plan occurred to him immediately, although he'd have to double back a ways and shimmy through some tight spots before he could get to the place he was thinking of. And of course, getting _back_ again would be tricky as hell.

There was a clattering sound behind him, and Link turned just in time to see one of the pots rattle to a noisy stop. Instantly to mind came similar pots from musty rooms in a dozen dank dungeons. Link hated fate, especially the sense that he wasn't in command of his own destiny. Coincidence, however, was fine by him, especially when it worked out in his favor.

**Reanalds Mansion Gardens, Hyrule Province**

Zelda smiled forcefully at the most recent knot of nobles and other worthies she'd come to, and watched in satisfaction as every one of them perked visibly. With words she couldn't even remember, she thanked them for attending, assured them that the country was doing wonderfully, assuaged their fears about this tax or that rumor, and thanked them for working hard to make Hyrule great. Though she rarely bothered to keep track of what pleasant nothings she energized her subjects with, she got the impression that every one of them took her words to heart and felt personally touched by her brief attentions.

In a way, she couldn't understand how she was doing it, but it was all so natural that it hardly seemed to matter. Ever since she'd taken up her crown in the wake of Gannondorf's plot, such things had been as effortless as breathing. To her, people in groups were like goats, you just had to herd them along. With verbal pokes and prods that didn't even register as words in her mind, she could weave a spell of syllables that would goad them to whatever emotion or point of view she desired.

Her brief chances to test it had largely come this very day, and she'd found her limit to be turning around strongly held opinions on specific subjects, or trying to influence a single person face-to-face. On the other hand, the bigger the crowd, the easier it was to create a strong, non-specific feeling. It seemed to go hand in hand with the way her mind was working lately, and it didn't take her burgeoning powers of reasoning to suspect why it was happening. She took a surreptitious glance at her left hand, but the Triforce symbol was absent.

"Your Majesty, Baron Olander has expressed an interest in speaking with you, as have the…" Zelda's attention wandered from the steward whispering in her ear, confident that he would discreetly guide her wherever her presence was required. Zelda was possessed of a certainty that if anything important came up, she'd snap back to the conversation and be well-placed to handle it, and so she let her thoughts wander. A part of her mind she didn't bother paying attention to handled all the dreary details of working the crowd: small talk, body language, facial expression, and all the rest. That left several parts free.

Out of the corner of one eye, Zelda spotted Lady Reanalds and her daughter Avril trying very hard not to look like they were watching her. They were doing a terrible job, and they were even worse at concealing their petty envy. Both were gorgeous, pale beauties with dark hair done up in magnificent, piled-high styles that must have taken hours; each wore dresses styled to match without giving the impression that they were trying to. Zelda was aware that they delighted in making other women and girls in these high-society situations into victims of their condescension, and doubtless they'd hoped to try their luck with her. But she was princess, soon to be _queen_, and no matter what else, that meant _she_ _won_. What was more: she really was outshining them in a way that had nothing to do with her social status, and had blossomed into the absolute center of _their_ party.

For her, it wasn't arrogance—she could sense it like a smell or a sound. She was radiant in the gifted dress from Lord Reanalds, the brilliant red and shining gold patterns stitched onto it gleaming in the afternoon sun. With the barest effort, Zelda was magnetically attracting the admiration of everyone around her, and the party tilted on her axis as she wove through it. It was like the party was a stream, with currents and eddies, and Zelda was looking down at it from above, diverting its flow as she wished. The sense of power it granted was significant, but Zelda's mind had little patience for enthralling sensations like power. She had more important things to deal with.

Suddenly, a merchant in the group that had come down from Kakariko asked some very pertinent questions about royal funding of settlement incentives and reconstruction initiatives, and Zelda devoted her full attention to distracting him from the subject entirely and leaving him with the sense that she'd answered his question and the change was his own idea. She didn't need anyone to suspect that she was leaving off on aid to that region, because she didn't need anyone to realize how close they were to war with Ghent. Rebuilding land that might soon be occupied was not high on her priority list. The loop she led the fellow through would have been amusing, but she shuffled aside her satisfaction to consider her two largest problems once again.

Ghent. What was she going to do about Ghent? After running a whole host of scenarios, Zelda was left with no good choices. A diplomatic mission was all she had resources for, and so she'd have to settle for that, clearly, but it was highly unlikely that such would manage things there. She _might_ be making a big deal about nothing—they could _honestly_ be doing mock exercises at the border—but she didn't think so, and it didn't pay to plan for anything less than the worst possibility in any case. The problem gnawed at her, though such never made it to her face.

And of course, her other problem was resplendent in a colorful embroidered tunic that best played to his athletic figure. The Lord Reanalds mingled around his party like he really enjoyed it, which he might. She discreetly kept an eye on him, watching for him to make the move she had devised was coming, not wanting to miss the fireworks. She figured she could handle the man, but something about him threw her off-kilter, and she just couldn't place her finger on it. The way he got under her skin was a distraction that seriously threatened her ability to work on Hyrule's future, and she would be happy for the day she could escape this forced proximity to him and his toxic family.

"I think I'll step aside for some air," Princess Zelda said to no one in particular. None the less, her crew of stewards would now politely delay anyone asking about her, indefinitely if necessary. She would lose control of the affair, but she'd impressed everyone she cared to with the general sense that the crown was in secure hands, and she was tired of practicing these abilities that she'd discovered. She needed a break, and she wove through the crowd until she found its edge.

Now that she didn't care for attention, people suddenly lost track of her, and when she felt no eyes upon her, Zelda quickly stepped around the side of a towering hedge. She took a few turns in the squared-off array of boxes with gaps that was a token attempt at a hedge maze, and discovered a balcony with a breathtaking view.

She had to admit, Reanalds Mansion had a premiere location. The cliff it had been built upon looked out over Hyrule Castle in its great valley on one face, and still had a glimpse of shining Lake Hylia on another. It was like a beautiful fortress, and another use of fortresses had always been prisons. She tried not to think of it that way, and of course, her duty was to her people, but there was much she hadn't seen in this world, and her curiosity was vast. Vast, and growing steadily as her mind expanded.

"Rupee for your thoughts?" a familiar voice said, and Zelda jolted with shock. He _couldn't_ be here. It was impossible in so many ways that she doubted she could number them. "What's the matter? Weren't you expecting me?" Zelda glanced around in a half-panic as she searched for the source of that terribly familiar voice, and didn't find it until she was tipped off by an intermittent, almost sarcastic 'psst' sound from below. Stacked with disbelief, Zelda looked straight down over the balcony, and there he was.

He looked different, clinging to the cliff side with one hand as he waved genially up at her with the other. For one, she'd never seen him out of his hero's garb, and it was such a change that it took her a moment to recognize him, even though she'd already placed his voice. At the moment, he was wearing a jacket of mixed leather and chain mail under a grey cloak that made him look like some kind of mysterious, armed vagabond. With weapons harnessed to every part of his back and belt, he appeared ready to take on a whole division by himself, or perhaps slay a giant, man-eating monster. She knew on an instinctive level he was quite capable of both simultaneously, if it came to that.

"Link?" she couldn't keep the disbelief out her voice, despite the evidence right before her eyes. Apparently, he'd scaled the cliff on the Lake Hylia face, though a quick glance showed he'd at least enough sense to use climbing gear. "In the name of the goddesses, what on earth are you doing _here_?" Zelda couldn't manage more than a conspiratorial whisper, some part of her recognizing that no amount of spin could make this look good if they were suddenly discovered. "For that matter, how did you even _find_ me?"

"Huh, well, that's some way to greet someone you sent out for," Link said, his conversational, complaining tone at extreme odds with his terrifyingly vertical situation. It was also at odds with the way a commoner spoke to royalty, but neither of them noticed that in the slightest. "Why am I _not_ surprised that you're surprised? I should have figured something was up when nothing I said to the gate guards persuaded them to let me speak to someone with actual authority." He paused, shaking his head in exaggerated annoyance. "As for how we met like this, I'll be da—" Link suddenly remembered who he was talking to—a lady—and changed his swear, "darned if I know. I'd call it fate, only I _hate_ fate. So let's just call it a happy coincidence that you came to the balcony I chose to climb toward. If nothing else, you rescued some servant somewhere from getting beaten up and striped like those terribly un-helpful gate guards."

"_What_?" Zelda whispered her shriek of woe, "you assaulted some of Reanalds' men? Link—_why_ would you—"

"Here!" Link said, navigating the labyrinth of weaponry on his harness to fish a rather grubby letter out his belt. He thrust it up, and Zelda was forced to crouch and pluck it from between the balcony railing posts, vertigo assailing her as the dizzying heights below Link became that much more apparent. With a quick scan, Zelda knew what had happened, and pieced together events of the recent past on intuition and conjecture. If Auru had been there at that moment, he probably wouldn't have survived the experience. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just get up off this cliff…"

"Don't!" Zelda said, "You can't be seen here, it'll cause an uproar."

"Well, yeah, but—" Link looked left and right, then back over his shoulder. Then he shrugged. "Whatever you want, Your Majesty."

"I'm _so_ sorry Link," Zelda said, sincerity pouring from her heart as she leaned against the balcony railing and looked down at him. An effort of massive concentration kept her from falling over at the cavernous view stretching below him, the same view he'd shrugged off without effort while clinging to the wall by a line and his own hands. "I never meant for you to hear about this, certainly not from _us_. I… didn't want to ask anything more of you. After everything you've done for Hyrule—"

"Please, Princess," Link said, shifting his weight on his hand and toe grips for comfort, "Believe it or not, I'm a big boy capable of making my own decisions. You don't need to worry about protecting _me_ from anything, certainly not from simple knowledge. Now tell me, I've already resolved to travel around, do you or do you not have some kind of task I could think about taking care of while I'm hoofing around the country? Frankly, I could use a point in the right direction."

The moment he freely offered his aid, Zelda felt something inside her crumble and give way. Just like that, the staggering guilt complex lingering in Zelda's heart, the one she didn't even consciously recognize, finally burst. In a disorienting wave, the change freed up lines of logic and action possibilities she'd blocked out without even realizing it. At the same time, she realized exactly _why_ it had been there in the first place. It was a bitter drought all around, and she had nothing but her own insight to blame for how well she recognized her folly.

The fate of Hyrule had landed on Link's shoulders without anyone asking if he wanted it, and since she knew _exactly_ what it was like to have crushing responsibilities you'd never asked for, she'd felt _terrible_ about it. It was _her_ country, _her_ responsibility, but she hadn't been able to protect it without consuming Link's freedom into her vacuous lifestyle of duty. She felt it must be even worse for him, because he received none of the privilege that went along with it, and didn't appear to want any of it, anyway. That it had all been the march of fate, as inexorable as the changing seasons and inevitable as the sunrise, hadn't lessened the weight upon her heart at what had happened to him.

Beneath her logical mind, down where emotions still ruled her path, the choice had been made, and made poorly. Some naive part of her had imagined he'd be able to get his quiet life back if she just left him out of her problems, but she'd been wrong. The damage was done, and couldn't be undone. But… Link _forgave_ her, if he'd ever even blamed her at all. Indeed, she could sense no grudge in him, not a trace of the resentment she'd imagined was all he could hold toward a symbol of what stole away his simple world. Now, Link _wanted_ to help, and with that wildcard resource added to the variable pool, the new possibilities were limitless.

Zelda had another, heavier dizzy spell as her brain went into overdrive, and Link looked on in wonder as he saw the change occurring. He could literally _see_ her mind ticking like the world's most intricate piece of clockwork, an aura of energy pouring out of her and making his skin tingle. Without a doubt, Link realized what people must feel when _he_ really let loose, and it was at once comforting and distressing.

Until he saw it, it never occurred to Link that Zelda would be facing the same strange changes he'd encountered. Intellectually, he knew she'd held the Triforce of Wisdom only as long as he'd held Courage, but she'd always been such an aloof, mysterious entity that he simply took for granted that she'd have controlling it well in hand. She wobbled on her feet and moaned, eyes staring at nothing, and he had to reconsider that assumption.

Zelda, meanwhile, was in the throes of a true revelation. Deep in her bones, she was aware of what Link was capable of, even above and beyond the astonishing things she'd actually _witnessed_ from him or suspected he'd done. It was the same sense of connection, of ancient understanding and intimate knowledge, that she'd felt the first time Midna had brought him to her. Knowing she had _that_ on her side was what had given her the confidence to cast off her bleak despair and endure her time imprisoned between light and twilight. It was the same bone-deep familiarity that made these words they shared seem long-familiar, rather than the most they'd ever spoken to one another at one time.

With knowledge of that power, Zelda was faced with plans and schemes in such dazzling array that it nearly brought her to her knees to try and sort them. What's more, an odd certainty had gripped her. Some confident, haughty voice whispered it to her: that as long as she dealt with him fairly and at least _appeared_ to keep her intentions in line with his, he would achieve wonders untold at her bidding. At length, the swirling maelstrom of answers to the question, 'what can I do for you,' became too much, and Zelda was forced to block it all out.

"Come on Princess," Link said, almost surprising himself with how playful the words came out, "I'm sure there's at least someone around I could rough up for you. I'm good at extracting retribution—case in point: When we were kids, there was a boy who picked on my friend Ilia at the provincial fair, and made her cry. That kid went home without teeth. I'm sure you've got _something_ that a leather-necked goat-jockey like me could 'handle' for you."

Behind his smiling eyes, Link was finally listened to his own words, and was aghast. He was talking to the living embodiment of the goddesses' authority on Earth, and he was treating her like an old friend. And yet, speaking to her like this felt so _right_, the impropriety hadn't even registered at first. He hadn't noticed this familiarity during their past encounters, certainly not while preoccupied with terror over Midna's welfare in one way or another. Which, come to think of it, was most of the times they'd met—they hadn't exactly crossed paths in many situations that lent themselves to casual conversation. So far this meeting, they'd more than doubled all the words they'd ever said directly to one another, but he still felt like he'd been in her confidence since the day he was born.

"Link… you may yet save Hyrule again," Zelda said quietly, as a slow smile spread across her face. '_And again, and again_…' she added in her own mind. Then, something happened to her, as she looked down at Link's rakish smile with her problems dissolving away. With that self-imposed block out of her mind, Zelda could consider Link with all of her faculties. He was in her corner now, she was certain of it, and would protect her with his life, even as he worked to shift the weight of her burden partly onto himself. Of course, she had no reason to believe all that, but the sense of it choked her up, and her eyes misted as she flushed slightly. Link noticed, but said nothing.

Dabbing the tears away with and expression of embarrassment and annoyance, Zelda switched back to work before the situation got any more uncomfortable. She had to think of the best way to capitalize on Link as an agent, and that immediately set her to the problems of dealing with such a subtle, yet super-human element. With the monumental tasks she envisioned for him, he might well become famous beyond measure. Notoriety would limit his usefulness in discreet actions, even as it forced others to reconsider Hyrule as a target of schemes. Still, her immediate desire to knight him and set him to work was tempered by the mumbling of her ever-emerging, sneakier side. What if he worked in somewhat looser association with her efforts? It couldn't hurt to sound him out about it.

"Link, before I give you your first orders—"

"Orders?" Link raised an eyebrow, and Zelda realized that he was the first person to freely interrupt her in months. Not even Reanalds dared to cut her off mid-sentence these days. That Link had done it several times already and she hadn't even noticed until now said a lot about how inexplicably natural and informal this dialogue really was. "Princess, I want to help, but let's get something clear. I'm not one of your flunkies to be ordered about. I don't want to be a knight of the crown or any such thing—I haven't the stomach for standing in the public eye. Honestly, I don't even want to be on the _payroll_."

"Oh… well… _good_," Zelda said, staggered by the coincidence. _That_ certainly made working him as an under-cover agent a bit easier. Several flashes of insight zinged through her brain at once, her professional interests colliding with a very quiet, incredibly insistent _private_ interest, and she was left smiling a devious little smile. "In that case… would you consent to… well… to being my _personal_ agent?" she heard herself ask quickly, before her flush of bravado faded and her heart began to throb. In the silence that followed, she was compelled to add, "Strictly under-the-table, of course."

"The Princess's Knight?" Link asked, and he smiled in spite of himself, "Yeah, I think I like the sound of that, especially if it's only the two of us that have to hear it. What exactly would it entail?"

"First of all, _no one_ can know that we're in contact," Zelda said as her heart raced, forcing her to suppress a growing anxiety before it showed in her voice or expression, "which will be complicated by the fact that we'll have a way to contact each other at any time. We'll talk, and I'll make suggestions and keep you informed. You're attendance to the suggestions is entirely voluntary."

"Wait now, _what_?" Link asked. He wasn't buying it, which wasn't hard to believe considering Zelda had made most of it up on the spot. She didn't know exactly what possessed her to fabricate all this, but she hadn't felt this excited and alive in a long time. "Alright, what's the catch?"

"Well, it requires an oath," Zelda lied confidently, "an oath that your first loyalty will lie with me should I ever be threatened."

"An oath?" Link asked, caution blooming on his features. For a moment, Zelda was certain she'd oversold the lie, and Link would laugh in her face. Then Link looked up and focused his eyes on hers. "That's a pretty big step for me, Princess. I sort of pledged that my first loyalty would be to myself and my own feelings. But there again, my feelings are that being in touch with you is a pretty good idea. If that means I'll be your provisional, off-the-books agent, I guess that's what I'll do."

Link thought he saw Zelda flush slightly when he spoke of his feelings, but he disregarded it as he thought more about what he was agreeing to. The last thing in the world he wanted to be was tied down by a chain of command. Still, the Princess would know where the action was at, and what's more, he'd found that he really liked talking to her. If she knew a way to communicate conveniently at distance, some half-assed oath was hardly too much to pay. He wasn't about to give a real one when she was advertising her lies so openly, assuring him it wasn't really important to the process.

"Very well," Zelda said, and pulled off the pendant hidden in her dress. It was a violet prism cut into a simple diamond shape like two pyramids bottom-to-bottom. Inside the cage it formed was a tiny glowing ball that faded in and out like it was breathing. This little trinket had jumped into her thoughts the moment Link had volunteered, and had woven itself into her whimsical lies quite perfectly. "Link," her voice was solemn as she knelt down to pass the pendant through the balcony posts, "this is a royal heirloom, so be very careful with it. I need you to hold it and make your oath."

Link reached up and touched it, and their fingers brushed as she traded it to him. He seemed to think for a while, and then nodded. He was grinning in a way the Princess didn't trust.

"I, Link of Ordon, do solemnly swear to listen to what Her Majesty has to say, carefully consider what it was that she said, and then go right on and make whatever decision I choose. Also, I suppose I'll back her up if she's ever in a tight spot. Err…" he made a show of wondering how to finish it, "oh right! _Ahem_: So help me goddesses."

Before he was half done, Zelda was openly giggling, and the feeling of laughter was so wonderfully unfamiliar that she almost fell over and ruined her dress on the manicured lawn. It didn't matter that he'd cracked open her fumbling ploy, so long as he consented, and the humorous way he'd broken any pretense of believing her was a lesson in humility as well as humor. She hadn't laughed since… since the last time she'd spoken with him. She realized he was staring at her, and that damn blush came back.

"Let me see the pendant again, but hold on tight," Zelda told him. When he held it up, she gently touched the stone. It flashed, and as she pulled her hand away, a phantom outline of the pendant followed it, clinging to her fingers. In a few seconds, it coalesced into a perfect copy of the original.

"What's this for?"

"You'll see. For now you'd better get out of here, I'll be missed very soon," Zelda said, and a sudden breath of pain stung her at the thought of parting. Almost out of hand, she let her desire to inspire him with confidence and strength transfer to her mouth. As usual, she didn't know what she said, but that was the _only_ thing usual about it.

"What?" Link asked, obviously confused, "Was that… some kind of song… or something?" Zelda was shocked that it hadn't worked, and had no answer. It took but a moment for her to realize she had absolutely no power over Link, and the nonsense others found mesmerizing was just nonsense to him. Rather than disturbing her, it forced her to consider him from yet another new perspective.

Here was an honest, inherently good person she couldn't bully, intimidate, or flim-flam with mystic voodoo. No matter what, he would always tell her straight what he thought of her decisions, and she couldn't silence him with her power, even by accidental, subconscious desire. Her insight spoke, and she realized connecting with Link was like she'd just been given a surrogate conscience. Of course, instead of a cricket, she got an unstoppable champion warrior. He was like the answer to all of her prayers wrapped up in one gorgeously-sculpted, blue-eyed package. Her nearly awed happiness went to her head and spilled out as words before she could check herself.

"Link," she said, "I could just kiss you."

"What was that, Your Majesty?" Link asked, apparently having actually missed it. Zelda clapped a petite hand over her mouth and blushed from her neck to her forehead. Link looked suspicious and thoughtful, and Zelda desperately wanted to escape this unbalanced feeling.

"I should go!" She said, taking a hesitant step away. "Are you going to be okay getting down?"

"Don't worry about me," Link's voice was muffled by the cliff corner between them until he pulled himself up to peek through the balcony railing posts, "I bumped into an old friend in the storage shed when I tucked away those two thugs I thumped at the front gate. But hey, Princess, you still haven't given me a _clue_ where I should take myself! And. y'know I had other questions, too!"

"I'll tell you tonight."

"_Tonight_? You want me to climb this thing _in the_ _dark_?" The look of despair he exaggerated theatrically was so farcical that Zelda struggled not to laugh again.

"No!" she breathed past a giggle, "Don't worry, its all to do with that pendent. Now get out of here!"

"Wait! One last thing," Link caught her up before she could spin away through the decorative tower-hedges. He'd been gripped by an inexplicable whim of his own, a desire that routed from storybooks and bard's tales that spoke of such occasions as this. "Come back over here, would ya?"

Zelda did what he asked, if only after a nervous pause. Her blood was running hot in her veins, and she was facing a battery of feelings she wasn't used to dealing with. Her composure had never been this far gone for any reason in her memory, and it was almost frightening. At the edge of the railing, she put her hands on it and looked down at him one last time. In a blur, he jumped up, caught a hand on the railing next to hers, and pulled himself up one-handed like it was nothing. He finished the motion before she could begin to react, and pressed his lips gently to her small hand, even as she stumbled back in shock. The contact was like a lightning-jolt up her arm, and she was left speechless.

"A little something to commemorate our new partnership," Link explained, pulling himself up until he was sitting on the balcony rail. While Zelda watched in open awe, he disconnected his climbing lifeline and gave her a wink and a jaunty wave. Then he jumped off the cliff.

Zelda rushed to the edge, terror freezing her heart as the bottom fell out of her stomach. And then she was at the balcony looking over, a whooping howl of exhilaration echoing off the cliffs to greet her. Her jaw flopped open, because Link was now floating safely downward, the legs of a strange little bird gripped in both hands.

It was one thing to know what the man was capable of, and something else entirely to witness it first-hand. Very quietly, she felt at the place on her hand his lips had touched. Under her breath, she said a prayer of dire warning to Hyrule's—or rather, to _her_—enemies. Anyone Link decided to go after was in serious trouble, and she had a list of suggestions that just seemed to get longer.

Back at the party, Zelda found that she'd overstayed her respite, and dove head-first into the task of smothering rumors about where she'd been and restoring a sense of jovial normalcy to the evening. Everything was basically under control again when the happy air of the party was shattered by a bang-crack of exploding metal and a ripple of screams and shouts of surprise. Every eye in the garden looked in the same direction, and everyone saw Lord Reanalds gripping a hand over his right eye as concerned servants scrambled and fawned around him. He was raging and growling, and it was quickly clear that he was bleeding from the face. The quiet exploded a second time, but now it was because every voice in the area was raised in excited, wild speculation. Doubtless the rumors would be fantastic.

At length, Reanalds' good eye, bloodshot with berserk fury, landed on Zelda. She felt that gaze wishing death upon her, and she ignored it as she played a crowd of courtiers like the slack-jawed cows they strove so hard to be. She had little to fear this time, because unlike the arrogant Earl, she had no trouble concealing her satisfaction when her victory was supposed to be secret. She would ever remain above reasonable suspicion for causing his lewd plot to literally explode in his face.

After all, her spies were all quite loyal enough to keep quiet about the way they'd traced his purchase of her dress. They would never speak of how they'd researched the enchantment woven into the fabric, the enchantment Zelda had felt the moment she'd examined it, and traced that back to the hedge-wizard who'd fashioned it. He would never know of the cold, murderous desire she felt when Auru had passed on the report. Oh yes, he would never know she'd learned that the dress was spelled to appear invisible when seen through a special lens—a lens such as the Earl's dress monocle. And, knowing none of that, he would never discover how she'd subtlety tweaked the spell. She hoped the brief glimpse of her nude body was worth it to the lecherous scum, worth the scars his exploding monocle had carved forever into his flesh.

Even as she ignored him, leaving him to flounder in uncertainty, she promised herself this was his last warning. Mercy was a dangerous thing, and Zelda almost regretted not going farther already. She resolved then that the next reprisal would end him, and he would never get a third chance to plot against her. That was what her wisdom told her—any strike against a foe had best be crippling, because a man can seek revenge for a small slight. But a man that has been _demolished_ has no hope of striking back.

**Faron Woods, Ordonia Province**

Link pulled his cloak over himself like a blanket as he relaxed in the tree-shrouded burrow he'd found to camp out in. He didn't bother with a fire, what with the quality rations and small beer he'd looted from Reanalds Mansion, and it wasn't long before he was hunkering down to sleep. Epona was nearby somewhere, doing her own thing as usual, and though he didn't have a destination yet, he hadn't any other care in the world.

Well, that wasn't quite accurate. To save his life, he couldn't imagine what had compelled him to go to such antics as kissing the princess's hand earlier. For some reason, he'd really wanted to impress the hell out of her, and parading cheesy storybook antics had seemed the perfect way. It had been worth it afterward, just seeing her expression was worth it, but where the motive came from, he couldn't really say. Like so many other things in his life since he'd fought for the gods, the decision hadn't been based entirely on his own will, even if it didn't oppose his general personality and goals in the slightest. It wasn't like he was _regretting_ anything he was doing, he just didn't like the way he'd do it all without consciously deciding on it first.

Before meeting her, he'd been split between a desire to dislike her for being a connection to that damn fated adventure, and the respect for the crown that was ingrained into any peasant at the deepest levels, reinforced by the mystical impression she'd given off at their previous meetings. The moment he'd seen her, standing there in quiet contemplation at the balcony, both of those had fled from his mind. He'd wanted to do for her anything that was within his power, and lacking that, he'd wanted her to be impressed that he was able to do very much indeed. The impulsive way it had all come out was annoying and a bit disturbing, but it all felt quite natural when he stopped to examine it.

He was nearly passed out in the pitch darkness when a sudden humming vibration in the region of his chest nearly scared the piss out of him. He was tumbling and flailing in the darkness for almost a minute before he managed to rip the undulating little critter out of his tunic and spill it onto the dirt, where its glow lit up the night. It was a long moment before he recognized it as the pendant Zelda had given him.

"Link?" Zelda's voice came out of the stone, almost startling him again. "Link, can you hear me?" Her voice was distant and echoing, like she was shouting to him from the other end of a narrow tunnel, but he could understand it without too much trouble.

"Umm…" he leaned over close to the pendant, not exactly sure what to do, "Yes!" he half-shouted, feeling like an asshole for breaking the forest's silence while technically all alone.

"No need to shout!" Zelda's voice complained, "The whispering stone works best when we use our _indoor_ voices." The patronizing snipe drew a smile out of Link, and he moved to get comfortable as he stared down at the stone. So this was how they'd be keeping in touch. Ingenious.

"So, how does this thing work?" Link asked, taking an interest, but mostly just testing a softer voice.

"Magic," Zelda said, making it clear that he'd asked a silly sort of question. But she'd heard him.

"Okay, Mademoiselle Smarty Knickers," Link wanted to crack his skull on a rock as he heard himself fall prey to the intoxicating familiarity of talking to her, using a silly diminutive to address a woman that could order him imprisoned or executed without a reason, much less due process. "So now that I'm at your service, what can I do for you? This is still your show, and now I'm listening. Go ahead and talk."

"Actually, I recall you mentioned something about questions?" Zelda replied, and she had a hint of something in her voice, a quiet desperation, of all things, that got Link to thinking. A princess… any monarch, really… they wouldn't get too much of a chance to converse casually, would they? Why else would she put off briefing him about whatever leads on trouble she might have? Link cracked a smile that, as far as he knew, she couldn't see. Perhaps he'd stumbled into a different way he could help Hyrule, one _none_ of them had seen coming.

"Actually, Your Majesty," he began, "I didn't have anything pressing to ask." His burning curiosity about the Triforce had lessened now that he'd come to realize she was in basically the same boat he was. Asking about it couldn't hurt, and he resolved to have them compare notes before too long, but that was hardly a priority with the way every change had been anything but detrimental. "Was there anything you wanted to say? I'm all ears, and I can certainly keep a secret." That was incredibly forward of him, he knew, and chancy at best. He was holding his breath without realizing it.

"Well…" Zelda hesitated, and Link felt a thrill of anxiety as he feared he might have offended her. It wasn't exactly proper for someone to confide in a member of the opposite gender, especially a virtual stranger, and _particularly_ when the cleft in class was as vast as it was here. However, if she were set to stand on propriety and rebuff him, then her half-suppressed sigh of released tension and blooming hope wasn't a good start.

"Do you… really mean that?" Zelda asked, and Link knew that, for better or worse, he'd scored a direct hit. Though he'd hardly have believed it even just one day ago, his monarch was a person too. That person was isolated by her status and her supreme ability, completely encircled by people who could hardly hope to grasp what made her so amazing. Goddesses, he knew that feeling better than he ever wanted to.

Always in the past he'd had Midna around to shake things up with her snappish, elitist façade and uncompromising force of personality. She knew his every secret, and never pretended to be impressed by what he was. But, since her abrupt and permanent departure, Link himself had learned what it was like to be completely alone, even when surrounded by people. The Princess must have it even worse; she lived in a world where every single person she came into contact with was her subordinate, people she needed to impress with a sense of her imperviousness, and thus the overall power and security of the nation itself. Link had been victim to that act himself, until this most recent visit, and it wasn't the kind of impression that made one talkative in her presence.

"Listen, Princess," Link said, trying for an open, honest tone, "I'm twenty miles from nowhere, lying in the pitch black of night other than your fancy magic necklace. If you've got anything at all to say, please, make my night. The goddesses know I'd be bored to sleep by now if you hadn't made this pleasantly surprising call."

"Well then, if that's how you feel," she sounded totally amused by his description of the circumstances, and that much more at ease because of it, "I suppose there were a few things…"

Zelda spoke in an even tone, hesitantly at first, but as soon as the first small pinhole opened in her burdened soul, the outpouring of stress under pressure forced it wide open until she was fairly singing her life to him. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. Crop yield projections? Budget and finance management? The ramifications of a new jailing policy on common law practice? What the hell did he know about those kinds of things? He simply made the appropriate responsive sounds when she paused and blessed his lucky stars she wasn't asking questions.

When she tired or the conversation prompted him for a comment, Link pitched in with an anecdote about some bit of pretty countryside he'd seen, or used stories about his experiences from battle to draw similes that had greater or lesser metaphorical value to the actual subject. The first he'd had much practice telling to the people back home, or over a drink at Telma's Tavern to whoever would listen. The latter he'd never dared breathe a word of to anyone, and even though he barely scratched the surface of the terrors he'd spat upon, to finally broach that secret volume of memory with another person was a wonderful relief.

Either way, he felt quite stupid, bumbling along in conversation with the most intelligent, articulate, and widely knowledgeable person he'd ever spoken with. But, somehow, she didn't condescend or patronize him at all. Indeed, she listened in rapt silence as he described the many sights he'd seen, and cooed in awe as genuine as a child's as when he recounted a few of the battles he'd survived. At length, it occurred to him that the outside world and all its manifold dangers and beauties were as mysterious to her as the endless heights of education and statesmanship were to him. That made him feel a little better about the balance of conversation.

At length, each half of the dialogue wound down as the two participants became swollen with contentment. The conversation slowed to a stop, and a pleasant silence pervaded the endless dark of the black night around Link.

"So… on to business," Zelda changed the subject, remembering business at last, over two hours after she'd first contacted him. "What do you know about Ghent?"

"Ghent?" Link asked, "They speak some odd language there, right?"

"Oh bother," Zelda's mild curse was so deadpan that it nearly had Link cracking up. Fortunately, she overpowered his urge to humor with her serious drive. "Link, Hyrule and Ghent are going to have problems very soon," she captured his attention immediately. "I'm sending a diplomatic mission, but I want you to go ahead as a free operator and use whatever means necessary to find out why their army is moving. After that, we'll talk more, or you can use your judgment on the best way you can apply yourself to keep things from coming to war. War would be _very bad_, Link."

"Huh…" Link made no comment for a bit, and then asked, "Is there anything else?"

"Link…" Zelda hesitated, "You won't be an agent of Hyrule for this work. Our diplomatic mission will be there too, but contacting them should be your very last resort. That means you're on your own, just a wanderer who happens to be in Ghent. Do you understand?"

"Hah!" Link snatched the stone up and put it right up next to his mouth. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

I'm not sure why, but I think the scene with Link and Zelda meeting on the balcony, Link dangling from the cliff without a care, and simultaneously recognizing their divine connection ranks among my favorites that I've written for any story, ever. Other than that, there isn't much to this chapter. I wanted the interaction between Link and Zelda to have multiple dynamics. On one level, it had to be two incredible, attractive people simultaneously seeing the incredibletude and attractivity of one another for the first time (silly terms intentional). On another, it had to be kindred souls of a thousand past conflicts reconnecting after another long period of dormancy. I think I pegged those two points pretty well.

On another note entirely, one reader once cautioned me that Link's avowed ability to kill a man by crushing his heart with a punch to the chest was a little bit too over the top to be believed, and that I should tone it back a bit. I wonder if he kept reading as things escalated far beyond these early offerings of ridiculous action.


	5. Shadows in Ghent

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 5: Shadows in Ghent**

**Kakariko Province, Hyrule**

Two day's easy riding brought Link to Kakariko, where he connected with some old friends and had a good night's sleep. The next day, with Epona well rested and fully groomed, Link set out at a harder pace to the southwest through jagged mountain passes, traveling roads mostly abandoned by the trade they'd been built to service. He spent that whole day and the whole of the next day navigating the winding road as it cut through the mountains, spending each night at campsites that had been dug out of high-elevation meadows by long-gone caravans and maintained by travelers over the ages. Before noon on the third day, he'd reached the first hurdle in the mission.

**Border Post Hylia, The Principality of Ghent**

The narrow crevasse where Border Post Hylia had been built was not the only way across Death Mountain to the lands of Ghent, but it was the only one that a wheeled cart could ever hope to traverse. Even the hardiest horse would have trouble with the few other mountain paths available, and no vehicle could expect to manage them at all. Still, it was not all that hard for a resourceful mountaineer to avoid their picket of the Hylian boundary, with the way it concentrated on that one road alone. And hey, the Ghentese didn't care.

At the end of the day, it was only trade that held any real interest for the Ghentese government's regulatory laws, with tariffs and taxes being the obvious reason. It would never do to let money flow away when the opportunity to take a piece for the crown was so readily available. If anyone wanted to sneak in solo with only whatever he or she could carry personally, they were welcome to, and were equally welcome to try doing much of anything without the official papers they were supposed to have picked up from the customs agents at the border post. It was a system that worked—so well, in fact, that Link himself was now about to be subject to it.

Oh, he'd much rather have infiltrated their rather porous borders—with the help of the gorons, he'd probably even have been able to get Epona through the mountains too. The Princess had suggested, quite politely, that he try nothing of the sort. A foreigner without papers, and with no knowledge of the local language or customs, was never going to get anything done in Ghent, much less do it discreetly. That was what sent him cantering slowly toward the formidable gates of the border post, the extremely well-armored sentries on their watch posts atop the wall considering him with their loaded heavy crossbows. They weren't quite aiming directly at him, nor even openly threatening him, but he could tell just by watching their hands and eyes that they were excellent shots who wouldn't hesitate.

At this hour of the day, the gates were wide open and manned by men in heavy plate armor and confidently wielding wicked polearms. A polearm, basically an axe and spear combined, was an expert's weapon as much as a sword, though it relied on the discipline of formation more than individual's skill to make it one of the hardest hitting weapons on any given battlefield. Link was impressed to see them handle theirs so confidently. This was a _professional_ army, equipped with masterfully mass-produced weapons and armor of superior design. Comparing them in disgust with Hyrule's rabble in arms, he could immediately tell why Zelda was so eager to prevent the war she'd sniffed out.

"_Bonjour_!" Link was approached by one of the armored men, and reined in Epona to a steady stop. The man approached him without particular caution and flipped up his visor, bravado easy when Link was covered by two gleaming pole-axes and two more high-powered crossbows. The face that peered out from his plate helm was of a youngish man with black hair and a permanent look of near-laughter plastered onto his easygoing face. "Might I say, Monsieur," he spoke in Hylian that was so good, Link was forced to believe that his thick accent was assumed, "that it has been quite an eternity since I last laid eyes on a Hylian who wasn't riding one leg or another of the arms and armor trade. Out of curiosity, what might bring a fine young man such as you to our lands?"

Several things went unspoken in that question, and a less jumpy Link would have missed many of them. His brain was energized by the lethal potentiality radiating from the gate guards, even as he was distracted by the effort of keeping his hair-reflexes from tossing him into these potential opponents blades-first. Among the flurry of subtext were featured prominently: "_Why are you using this checkpoint if you aren't a trader without a choice? Why are you armed to the teeth?_" And of course, "_Why do you make me so subtly afraid that only my four men covering you has convinced me to come this close?_" Link was pretty sure the guard hadn't intended to convey that last one, but he could read it just as readily as the rest.

"Well now, m'lord," Link gave the head guard his most winning smile as he assumed a rather vacant tone and exaggerated a backwoods Hylian accent, "let me just start out by introducin' meself. I'm called Link of Ordon, I am, and as you so correctly guessed, I'm a Hylian by birth, if not by life."

"Ah, yes—"

"As for what I'm doing in the loverly land of Gent," he saw every man present flinch noticeably as he intentionally butchered the pronunciation of their country's name, which the flowing Ghentese accent made very soft and almost musical. "For that I'd have to go and explain my profession first, I would. Y'see m'lord, I'm something of a bounty hunter, I am."

"Indeed?" the guard asked, upset to even be talking to him now that it was clear that, rather than an interesting exception to the normal travelers he got, he had encountered a vulgar Hylian peasant who was best dealt with quickly and forgotten.

"Most certainly m'lord. Why, I've hunted creatures and critters from the coastal marshes of Terez, all the way up to the icy climes of the Hylian snowtops, I have. Made me bread killin' moblins in the southern plains, lizerdmen in the western foothills, and the living dead in every damn place those ugly bastards have bothered poppin' up. I been lookin' for some better huntin' than what me old stompin' grounds had to offer, and that's when I done heard about the troll problem you gents been havin', I did. I'm lookin' to go and rustle up some troll ears, trade em in for some a those famous Gent-eze weppins."

Yes, Link really did say 'weppins.' He felt like a total fool, but overpowering that sensation was his amazement, because they were all _totally_ buying the act. Zelda had told him it would work, that all he had to do was show them what they expected to see and make it convincingly annoying. Apparently, the stereotype of Hylians was pretty absurd in Ghent, because Link knew that if he ever met a man _seriously_ talking the way he was, he'd personally kick the guy's ass on general principal. There was one other Ghentese societal quirk Zelda had tipped him off to, and that was what paid dividends next.

"C'est magnifique! A troll hunter you say?" He gabbed something to the other soldiers in Ghentese, and they all laughed and gave Link rather churlish smiles. One of the marksmen up on the wall shouted something to the other marksman, and every one of them laughed anew. Link kept his smile fixed, because even though they were obviously joking at his expense, the lethal threat he'd sensed from them was bleeding away rapidly. That made his life so much simpler, he gladly took the jokes without complaint. "Mon ami, any man who kills trolls is a friend of mine, and a friend of every person in Ghent. Still, I am not so sure you understand what it is to fight against the trolls."

"I dunno m'lord," Link kept up his 'wits of a stone' act, easier now that the desire to preemptively leap forth and butcher these guys was dissipating, "seems simple enough. Find the trolls, kill the trolls, collect trophy… been doin' it me whole life, given it was other types o' critters."

"But here is exactly my point, mon ami! Trolls are not smelly little moblins, attacking as a rabble and living in tiny, nomad tribes." At this point he seemed halfway between patriotic arrogance—_our_ monsters are tougher than _your_ puny critters—and an attempt to give honest advice. "Trolls are a nation unto themselves, Monsieur Hunter, as organized and cunning as any man, and still ferocious as rabid dogs in battle. Much as it pains me to admit, they are no stupid monsters. They are a people of trained warriors, concerted tactics, and vile black magics. If I were you Monsieur Hunter, I would turn around before I had a close encounter with a troll cook-pot."

"Wait—ya mean..." Link didn't quite have to fake his shocked disgust, because even though Zelda had warned him, the idea of intelligent, humanoid beings that reveled in cannibalism was still quite vile. "They et people?"

"Oui," the soldier said, looking grave. "They eat prisoners, cooking them alive, and they eat the dead, both theirs and ours, often raw if they cannot be bothered to start a roast! Do you see now why I warn you mon ami? You would do well to heed my advice and get back to your own lands."

"Wellll…" Link stretched out the sound, "actually, now I figure I wants in for a whole 'nother reason, m'lord." The Ghentese soldier gave him a searching look when he recognized the eager expression Link allowed to bleed across his stupid face. "Y'see, me mums was et by a monster, back when I was a beamish lad, she was. S'what sent me into this profession at the first, sure enough. I gots a score to settle with any kinda critter that ets people. It's worth me life and more if I can save some other poor blighter from havin' his mum et right before his cryin' eyes, it is."

The soldier considered his words and expression, and stood back to get a better look at him. Link had a fine horse, and was carrying weapons enough to arm three men. His armor looked ragged, but also incredibly well-worn in the way that only hard use brought. What's more, despite the vacant look on his face, the look in Link's eyes was undisguised, and that look was deadly. He realized it was that which had set him on edge in the first place. That was a look only a veteran of many battles could ever achieve—the look that assured any who felt it that its owner knew the value of his own life, and exactly how many people he was willing to destroy in violent ways in order to preserve it. At length, he stared back through the gate for a while, and then turned back to Link.

"Mon ami, in regular times, my love of life and manly honor would not allow me to let any foreign fool go to die in futile battle against the trolls. But you, foreign fool, have arrived in a time of turbulence. You need not the details, but our soldiers are being pulled away from the southern frontier, and many villages in the White Plains have been uncovered. If you are so eager to die, then I will not stop you. We need every able hand to hold back the trolls while our soldiers are… occupied."

"As you like, m'lord," Link said, genuinely grateful and understanding, though he had to mute that through his façade of inbred doltishness to keep up the act. The soldier gave an order to his men, and the lot of them seemed quite stunned. None the less, the infantry parted their crossed polearms and let Link ride into the post. And so, having faced the relatively easy task of bypassing security, Link met with his true foe: the customs inspector.

Three hours later, his wallet noticeably lighter, and a curse damning all bureaucrats everywhere frothing on his lips, Link folded his travel papers into an envelope containing all the letters he'd bothered keeping and tucked that into a belt pocket. The bastards had been rude to him in ways he'd not considered possible, and it hadn't been for a simple reason like nationalistic contempt for a foreigner or just plain meanness. No, they'd been rude because he'd had the 'gall' to claim that his bombs were not a taxable trade good, but rather, a tool of his profession.

Apparently, Hylian explosives were one of the nation's most valuable exports. They were used extensively in Ghentese iron and coal mines, and couldn't be manufactured locally. As such, they had a heavy duty on them, since it was something the locals couldn't help but pay taxes on, lacking any other source to buy from. If he'd told Zelda, she would have explained what bad national financial sense that was, for various reasons, but he himself just knew it was the most petty and annoying argument he'd ever been in. He was never happier than when he rode out of the outpost, leaving behind that ridiculous assumed dialect and any shred of patience he'd had in the first place.

It was time to get some work done.

**North-Eastern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

The White Plains of Ghent were vast, flat as can be, and completely covered in a waist-high weed-grass. From horizon to horizon that grass waved in the gentle winds, and as the sun shone on its endless reaches, the usually clear wax that covered every golden-brown straw seemed to almost glow with a white sheen. In other words, the name was quite apt for what Link found as he rode through the afternoon.

True to the briefing Zelda had given him, the enormous mobile camp of the mustering Ghentese army was only about five miles out from the border post in the Death Mountain foothills, just off the beaten dirt road that would eventually lead all the way back to Castle Town. He saw the camp off in the distance, and between there and the road was a vast parking lot for the carts that carried their supplies. The guards they'd posted at the road saw him right back, glaring at him dangerously until he'd ridden fully out of sight.

When he'd made it all the way over the horizon from them, Link left the road and doubled back on foot, leaving Epona to graze on the abundant straw. Even at a quick jog, it was quite a while before the camp came back into sight, and Link had to be extra careful as he closed in over the last half-mile. At that point, he couldn't justify trying to get any closer by daylight, because the only cover was the grass itself, and they had plenty of sentries.

The sentries themselves were attentive and well-situated at high vantage points. Lacking available wood in this plain, the Gentese had torn up the sod of the plains itself and piled it high, the tough networks of grass roots holding together soil like it was squares of carpet. From the tops of these stubby sod-towers, the guards sat in relative comfort under shading tarps and kept sharp lookout. Link pulled out his hawkeye and observed for about an hour, but the sentry change was well-executed, and the camp beyond was alive with activity. For a while, Link considered waiting for nightfall and trying his luck then. After a while, he rejected that plan and decided to go with an entirely different approach. Why did he have to sneak into the camp at all?

So far, every soldier he'd seen was on edge. Back at the border post, that guard with the laughing face had hinted at something odd going on with the Ghentese military. The trolls were as big a threat as ever, from what he'd heard, and yet here these guys were standing around in the wilderness, about as far from the southern swamps and the troll lands as you could get and still be in Ghent. The only reason to be out there was exactly as Zelda and Ashei had figured—they were preparing to move on Hyrule.

In theory, they could also march north to Careda through the Great Pass where the mountain range that included Death Mountain split westward to the sea and formed the barrier between Ghent and Careda. And yet, their proximity to the Hylia post meant that theory held no water. Of course, the real question was, did any of _them_ even _know_ these things that Hyrule's best minds had foreseen? They must suspect it, considering they probably weren't stupid and could read a map, but did they know _why_? In his heart, Link doubted it.

To Link, this whole thing smacked of a conspiracy at a level the average grunt, and perhaps even the camp commander, would never be let in on. As he crawled away from the camp and out of sight from the sentries, he recognized that there was only one person who was ultimately responsible for where these troops went. Even as he thought it, he hadn't a clue how he was going to manage it. After all, you couldn't just walk up to the Prince of Ghent and ask, "Hey, why are you planning to invade my homeland?"

His scouting mission having run long, Link decided to scratch any further travel plans for the afternoon. With what light he had left, he lead Epona far off the road, until he could see neither it nor any sign of life larger than a field mouse in any direction. He then beat down an area of grass until it formed a sort of cushion and made camp. As usual, he went without a fire and ate dry rations for dinner, his desire to avoid attracting 'night trouble' far stronger than his desire for a warm meal so soon out of city comforts. As he lay in the darkness listening to the wind and to Epona's soft, sleeping breaths, he half hoped for another call from Zelda.

By mutual agreement, she would be the one to contact him in all circumstances short of an emergency. Even in the dead of night, there was a chance she would still be working somewhere with people around, and while the whispering stone's call was relatively discreet, there was no need to take chances. It all made perfect sense, but Link was still having trouble with these silent, lonely nights. He'd never counted on how different traveling without Midna by his side would truly be.

With thoughts of her came that usual confusion, and he pulled out his twilight mirror charm and gazed into it, watching as the faint starlight reflected in its tiny, pristine depths. Link had grown completely used to having at least that one other, secret person with him at all times, someone to trade quips with and chat about nothing to. The first time the whispering stone had vented Zelda's voice, he'd dared to hope that he'd found that again. But of course, she had much greater responsibilities than easing the vast emptiness in his world left by that vile little imp. For that matter, so did he.

Settling for the terribly unsatisfying solution of duty's pure necessity, Link shoved aside his loneliness and lay back to try again for sleep. What kind of sense did it all make anyway? He was chomping at the bit to get out into the active world when he'd been surrounded by his loving family in Ordon. Now he was hip-deep in a new adventure, and all he could think about was just how huge the wide wilderness was, and just how small one man with some fancy footwork and more guts than brains happened to be by comparison. He didn't understand it, and as everyone knows, very little sucks so much as not understanding one's own heart.

At length, he struggled against his boiling thoughts, again regretting this infernal energy of his. Unless he'd done the work of three men, he always had too much left over to get easily to sleep. Finally, he half-quelled his useless and cyclical speculation with the dead-pool assurance that there were people in the world with problems much greater than his own petty concerns. He had to count his blessings. **  
**

**Central White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

Monica ran. She ran until her feet would hardly carry her anymore, and then she continued to run. The skirt of her somewhat raggedy shift of a dress billowed around her legs, and her bare feet were torn by the harsh sod. Just behind her, there was the reassuring sound of her mother keeping pace, her baby brother screaming out confused tears as he was jostled and jolted by their sprinting. All too close on their heels, there was the sound of death.

This morning had been nothing but simple routine. At the crack of dawn, Monica's mother woke her and her brother and the three of them set out together to carry fresh vegetables to Monseille, the capital of Ghent and home to the Prince's Castle. She would skip around her mother's skirts as Jaques, her brother, rode atop the merchandise mother was hauling. They would spend a whole day walking to the city, stay there with relatives while selling vegetables until they ran out or rotted, buy supplies, and come home to grow more. Such was how the entire summer was spent, and in this way, they'd known a little slice of happiness. All routine ended a few hours after noon, well more than halfway to the city, just short of the fork where the roads crossed.

Who could have expected that trolls would dare to raid this far north? Certainly not Monica, to whom such creatures were a bedtime story to scare her when she'd been naughty. Certainly not her young mother, Christine, who had grown up in the southern villages where attacks from the trolls were a common horror she'd thought long left behind. When she first heard the distant roar of the veraqs, terrifying, scaled, reptilian analogues of jungle tigers and denizens of the southern swamp tamed as mounts by the trolls, she'd thought herself trapped in a waking nightmare of her youth. And then her dear, sweet, ten-year-old daughter had pointed out the five approaching riders, cautious excitement on her innocent face as she saw such an unexpected sight.

There had been brief moments of hope, when Christine first thought that they might not have spotted her and her babies. And then the veraqs had let out another hungry reptilian roar, dug their wicked claws into the sod, and obeyed the excited taunts shouted by their handlers, charging forth after their prey. At which point, there had been time for nothing but running.

Until it got up to speed, which could take several seconds, a human being, even a child like Monica, was faster than a veraq. After all, their value as mounts lay more in their viciousness and endurance than their flatland speed. But still, their flight was hopeless, the beasts and their monstrous riders closing in quickly. Up ahead, Christine could see the signpost that marked the crossroad where the path split between east to Hyrule and Careda or west for Monseille and the small port of Tennes. Of course, that meant they were still miles from help, an entire afternoon's walk before they'd even be in sight of the city. It was hopeless, and as she heard the growling creatures thundering up behind her, Christine scooped up Monica in her free arm and tumbled face-down into the grass, shielding her children with her body, for all the good it would do.

Monica was left looking over her mother's shoulder, able to see death bearing down on them. In a sense, it was hardly real to one so young as her, and she was fixated on her killers as they rushed forth. By some unspoken agreement, one of the riders came forward as the others peeled off, the creature riding the creature raising its spear to gut the lot of them in one strike.

Suddenly, the veraq stumbled and crashed face-first into the ground, its startled rider going for quite a trip as momentum carried him forward without a mount under him anymore. Gravity did the rest, and he hit the ground hard, rolling to a stop only a few feet from the doomed family. It was then that Monica got her first good look at a real, live troll.

In a general sense, it looked like a man. Its arms and legs were longer and more muscular than a man's, and it had huge knees, but it was otherwise quite similar. This one had striking green skin, but one of the other riders had been a deep purple color, and yet another had been nearly powder white, so they had at least as much variety there as humans. Most notably different, its large head had lips forced into a permanent snarl around two jutting tusks, and the teeth were all pointed. Its bright red hair fell around its huge eyes in complex braids, and its ears were thin and membranous like a bat's. In a hand with two thick fingers and a huge thumb, it clutched a javelin, and a whole quiver with more was strapped to its back. It wore leather riding pants and a harness for its weapons, but was otherwise naked.

As Monica watched, the Troll scrambled to its feet, standing with a very hunched posture, making good use of its overdeveloped knees. It examined its fallen mount, and found it dead by way of arrow. The long bolt had pierced it through one eye, shattered its brain, and come out through the other eye. This shot had landed while it was at a _full run_. With a guttural scream in its own language, it warned its friends. It then turned back to look in the direction Monica's family was cowering in. It gazed over the tall grasses, and just had time to shout and point at some distant feature before a new arrow blasted through its skull between the eyes and snapped its head back. Before it fell, another arrow pierced its newly exposed neck, a spray of dark red blood erupting across the grasses.

Monica didn't really know what was going on, and her mother had been cowering away, but all of them realized more of what was happening when they heard the unmistakable sound of hoofs beating on the dirt, and quickly getting closer.

"Soldiers!" Monica squealed in happiness, and Christine didn't try to hold back her sob of relief.

"Thank the Mother," Christine whispered, praising the gracious goddess that had delivered her children from being roasted as a troll's supper. Then she remembered the other riders, and realized her children weren't safe yet. Standing with one of her babies in each arm, Christine looked around over the grass, knowing even relative safety would only come when she had the soldiers between her and the trolls.

Instead of the cavalry patrol from the city that she expected, she found only one rider, a single man thundering toward them from the east. She almost lost hope again, and spent a frantic moment searching for a better place to hide. The man and the other veraq riders were charging toward one another, and if she wasn't gone before they killed him, her family would be next. Her panic was interrupted by Monica's squeal of wonder, and her eyes found the battle again, almost against her will.

The lone man had a bow readied and drawn, and was standing in his saddle as he aimed. He let an arrow fly, and one of the trolls was knocked clean out of its saddle, heart pierced through. The speed of their mutual charges made another shot impossible, and the stranger was passing the trolls on the flank of their formation the next instant, each foe ready with cruel throwing-spear in hand. All three trolls let loose with their javelins, and Christine's heart rocketed up into her throat as her eyes fixed in horror on the death she was about to witness. There was a terrible clanging sound, and the two spears that had been on target ricocheted off a shield bearing a gold emblem on blue field.

Christine was _stunned_. She _knew_ those spears, she'd witnessed countless battles from behind village walls and hiding places in the tall grass. A troll warrior could pitch a javelin that would pierce a forged breastplate. Even if it failed to kill, it would stick in whatever metal it had penetrated and the soft metal just below the murderously hard tip would bend, making it impossible to move correctly until a smith could wrench it out. The man had just batted away two of them like the straws of grass the children often threw in games of make-believe.

The troll warriors circled on their mounts, the stranger on his horse staying still and firing again, dropping another troll from its saddle as his arrow spread its skull contents across the field. The last two trolls charged forward before he could draw another bead, hoping to spoil his aim. They were too slow, or he was too good a shot, and one more troll fell to the man's arrows, its high-speed, point-blank flight sending it through a troll's eye and out the back of his head.

The final troll wore its hair in a commander's crest, rather than the warrior's braids the rest had sported. This troll hopped down from his veraq's saddle and used it as cover from the man's bow, urging the beast into a frenzied charge. The man shot the veraq twice in the seconds before it struck, but it would not be stopped. Suddenly, his horse reared and planted its hoofs on the striking predator's skull, crushing the whole animal down to the ground by its sundered head. A javelin came flying in before the horse finished its attack, and the man _caught it in midair_, taking Christine's breath away and raising a shriek of wonder from little Monica.

The troll commander also looked shocked, but overcame that as the stranger discarded the javelin and drew another arrow, taking final aim. The last troll drew its sword, a machete-like, cruelly serrated thing, and screamed a challenging war-cry as it beat its chest. The stranger stared it down over the shaft of his arrow, listening to its furious trollish curses without any more understanding than the family, but still decided to cancel his shot. Stowing his bow, he hopped nimbly down from his saddle and confronted the troll face-to-face. It was easily two feet taller than him.

With a guttural bellow, the troll charged, joy on its face at this opportunity to strike back for its fallen comrades. The man pulled his shield off his back again, but didn't draw his sword. Christine couldn't understand what he was waiting for, and was still possessed of terrified confusion as walking man and charging troll met.

The exchange was so fast, the eye could barely follow it. There was a metallic clang as the stranger deflected a sword-slice that would have cleft him from shoulder to crotch, then a thump as he spun around the slower fighter's guard and brained it with his shield. At first the beast was just stunned, but a second shield-bash sent it staggering back, and it dropped its sword from numb fingers. The stranger kicked out, breaking one of the troll's muscular knees with a crack that could be heard across the field, and the troll crumbled down to his height. With a final spinning strike, the stranger decked the troll, spilling it into the grass. He raised his shield slowly above his head, and Christine had just enough time to cover her children's eyes before he brought it down edge-first and bashed in the troll's head once and for all.

Christine didn't know exactly what she'd just witnessed, except that one man had killed five troll marauders without even drawing his blade. Monica was writhing in her grip, and finally pulled her hand away to see no trolls in sight. Being a child and knowing no better, she did not hesitate.

"BRAVO!" She shouted passionately, startling Christine. She made a token effort to silence the girl, but Monica twisted out of her arms and started running toward the stranger. "BRAVO! BRAVO!"

Link wiped the last vestiges of troll blood from his shield and looked up to investigate the shouting. He didn't recognize the word, but the tone of it was all too familiar. He immediately noticed there was a disturbance in the grass moving toward him quite fast, and he braced himself, only to be shocked silly when a little slip of a girl in a tatty wool dress jumped out of grass taller than she was and tackled him into a hug. Her arms barely fit around his chest, and he looked down with incredulous eyes to find her looking up at him through her straight, waist-length black hair.

"Merci!" She shouted, and he could imagine what that meant.

"Monica!" Link looked up to see a young woman, perhaps in her mid twenties, rushing up to them through the grass wake left by the little girl, an infant in her arms. She approached until she was about five feet from Link, and then considered him with eyes half-afraid. He noticed she had the same black hair and eye shape as the girl, and he immediately pegged them as sisters.

The girl finally released her hug and backed away, somewhat more shy now that her initial exuberance had worn off. In a moment, she was standing in the woman's skirts and giving him wonder-glazed eyes. He'd gotten enough looks like that from the children in Ordon to know youthful hero-worship when he saw it, and he imagined it was a small blessing that she was a shy one. There was an awkward silence for a moment as Link stood irresolute of what to do and the woman continued to waver between following the little girl's example and running the opposite direction.

"Maman," the girl tugged on the woman's skirt, asking her a question in Ghentese. The question was "_Mom, why does the soldier have pointed ears?_" but Link only recognized that fist word. He just barely managed to keep his surprise in check as that registered. Apparently, they started them damn young here, at least in the rural parts. There was no way the woman was the kid's mother unless she'd given birth at fifteen. The mother shushed the girl and resumed her consideration of Link.

Link's first instinct was to simply get on his horse and go. He'd stepped in to stop a horrible injustice and had managed to get his first sense of battling trolls. The guard back at the border post had been right to call them tougher than moblins, and Link was impressed. They had military coordination and advanced tactics, despite their feral appearance. Like everyone, however, they'd underestimated him, _fatally_, and hadn't been much of a workout. He hadn't even had to break the sword-handicap he'd placed on himself to hone his other combat skills. Of course, he still had to go back and check the corpses. He'd been careful to crush the brain or heart in every instance, because he'd heard trolls could naturally heal from virtually any other kind of injury, given a little time. Still, you couldn't be too careful.

That brought him back to the baggage he'd unintentionally picked up. Honestly, he couldn't just leave them out here, not when there were still a few of those nasty lizard-cat mounts running around. And of course, more trolls might show up any time. Still, if he was going to keep them, he'd have to convince mom that he wasn't about to cut their throats or 'have his way' with them. Damn language barrier. Now… what had that guard said?

"Ah… Bon-jore, Madame," Link said, figuring he'd just exhausted half the Ghentese he knew. He accompanied that with what he figured must be a courtly bow, copied with moderate success from what he'd once seen a minstrel do at a tavern show. When he came up from the bow, the woman was stifling a giggle, so apparently the ploy had worked. That it had worked because he'd made a fool of himself didn't have to go down in his autobiography. Almost right away, the woman bowed back, quite a bit less theatrically.

"Merci," she repeated her child's thanks, with _feeling_, and Link nodded. She went on with a lot of words Link didn't know, but eventually pointed to herself and said, "Christine," among other things, so he at least knew her name. She then ran a loving hand through the little girl's hair and indicated her name was "Monica," although Link had gathered as much. She then bounced her little baby, who giggled, and named him as "Jock."

Link greeted the little girl personally, and then the baby too, which useless gesture pleased both females immensely. He then gave a sharp little whistle consisting of three simple notes, and Epona cantered up on command. Both of them were little girls in the horse's long shadow, eyes filling with instinctual female horse-love as they looked way up at her flowing mane and soft eyes. Link never really understood that, and he realized it wasn't necessarily universal, but that didn't stop him from using Epona to impress chicks whenever the opportunity arrived. On the other hand, he considered it fortunate that they didn't look down instead, because Epona's hooves were still coated in blood and tissue from the lizard-creature she'd crushed.

"I'm Link," He said, indicating himself, "and this is Epona," he ran a hand across the big girl's flank. "We're on our way to Mon-se-il-le." When he finished, the mother looked away from Epona to consider him with a skeptical glare. For a moment, she hadn't a clue what he was talking about, but at length, she managed to hazard a guess.

"Monsay?" She asked, and pointed off down the road Link had been on before. The name she said wasn't what was written on the map he'd bought over at the border post, but he wasn't about to argue with a local. Being completely honest with himself, he sort of just felt lucky that Hyrule and Ghent used the same alphabet at this point.

"AH! Ma Deesse!" the woman's shout of frustration caught Link off guard, more so when she suddenly thrust the baby into his arms and withdrew, forcing him to hold on or let it tumble away. Instincts that grip deeper than any other simply wouldn't allow that, and Link was suddenly staring a rather smelly little package right in the face.

"What the heck?" He asked, looking to Christine. She was backing away with one finger held out in a universal request for patience. Before he could get another word in edgewise, she was dashing away through the grass, shouting instructions to Monica, who also stuck with Link. He watched her go with a rather vacant look, too far out of his depth to even know how to protest.

She disappeared from sight, and he was alone with the children. He looked at the burbling baby in his arms, then down at the little girl giving him the huge, glowing smile. Well, damn.

Christine recovered her vegetable cart and wheeled it back toward the crossroads. The entire time, she had no greater thought than the danger she might have left her children in, to have trusted them to that stranger. But still, she was heading back south, and Trolls weren't known for raiding in groups as small as that party. She half-expected to be set upon again at any moment, but if she didn't get these vegetables to Mansielle, they would face the certain death of poverty _anyway_. Short of somehow getting Monsieur Link to actually come with her to get it, this was her best compromise, and just communicating names had been hard enough. This was the balance of risks she'd chosen, perhaps not wisely, but it seemed the thing to do at the moment.

Thinking it through again, she realized that she trusted him. When she'd looked into his eyes, she'd seen a killer. But deeper than that, she'd felt a simple honesty and kindness that belied the blank-faced viciousness that he'd carried with every movement as he bashed in that troll's head. That feeling she'd gotten reminded her of something, in fact. Her husband.

"He's not Manuel, you silly girl," Christine admonished herself as she hauled the old trestle behind her. It was astonishing how much ground one could cover when running with death on one's heels, as it now seemed three times as far to make this round trip to the crossroad. At length, she came to the signpost and began looking around, knowing it would be impossible to miss that huge horse.

Sure enough, the great, beautiful beast was nibbling on some of the flaxen grasses nearby. But still, she didn't see where the rest had gotten to. She fought down an irrational bout of panic, remembering the way the man had fought. Nothing could fight a beast like that and not leave significant traces. And of course, he would not abdicate with her children and leave his horse.

"Monica!" She called into the grasses, and then thought for a moment. Surely he would recognize his name? "Monsieur Link!"

"Maman!" Monica's happy shriek answered almost immediately, and she popped up over the grass a ways out where the short battle had taken place. The young foreigner stood up from where he'd been crouching and looked her way, and Jaques looked her way in the same motion. This was because Link held the baby on his shoulders by a band tied around his neck and the baby's waist. It looked terribly unsafe, and Christine's hands went to her mouth in a burst of maternal fear. She was running over to them before she realized her feet were moving.

"Oh Maman—Monsieur Link is sooo cool!" Monica assured her, running up halfway to meet her and dogging her heels as she dashed up to Link. The man considered her with an unsympathetic expression as she scowled at him and recovered her baby from his head. 'Teach you to press your kids off on me, huh?' his manner seemed to say, with a big smile added in, as she tried to bore a hole in him with her eyes. She would have told him off, if it could have done any good, but had to settle with giving him the stink-eye.

"Oh don't worry Maman!" Monica chided her in the voice of a child who knows everything, "Jaques was perfectly safe. You should have heard him laugh his head off every time Monsieur Link bent over. Oh! That reminds me, Monsieur Link was showing us how to check and make sure a dead troll is really dead! Isn't that just the _coolest_?"

"He was _what_?" Christine asked, immediately reconsidering her fledgling faith in the man. A veteran of a young lifetime around battles against the trolls, Christine knew very well how dangerous it was to check the dead after a battle. In more than half of all cases, a troll lying still on the White Plain's grasses was just waiting to heal enough so it could crawl back to the swamp. Even if the world was a red ruin around it, if its skull or heart had not been destroyed, it could probably still recover, even without treatment.

There had once been a battle so bad that a thirteen-year-old Christine had been forced, along with everyone else in her village, to help the soldiers put down the wounded trolls before they could recover enough to move. Ten people she'd known her entire life had died to rabid, half-dead trolls within an hour, and the decision was made to simply burn the fields where the battle had taken place. They'd lost two thirds of the harvest that season, and only their battle-thinned numbers had kept them from starving. Not that she had stayed for that—that was the winter she left town with the fifteen-year-old infantry sergeant's apprentice who'd saved her life and swept her off her feet.

"Listen to me Monica!" her mother's tone took the wind out of the little girl's sails quite easily. "You will never get anywhere near a troll, even one that looks totally dead, _ever_, if you can _possibly_ avoid it. You must promise me this _right_ _now_."

"But _mom_—"

"Promise!" Monica scuffed her bare toes in the sod, upset at the way grownups could be so good at not listening.

"I promise, Maman…" Monica said, rather petulantly, and her mother nodded. "Monsieur Link wasn't letting us near the trolls _either_…" She added in a tiny, 'I'm right but you wouldn't listen' voice as soon as her mother turned away. Christine was taken aback, but didn't let her daughter see it. So, apparently, this Link man wasn't such a reckless fool after all. Even as she thought that, her eyes came back to him.

While she'd been busy with her daughter, Link had picked his way down the road. For a moment she thought he was going toward her cart, but then she remembered the first troll casualty. She pulled Monica along with her as she caught up to him, and was just in time to see him finish going through the harness belts of the dead body for loot. She resisted the urge to sneer—it was something any true battle veteran did, after all. Even Manuel had managed to afford her wedding pearl only because he'd been the first to loot a troll with a gold tusk cap.

He moved to finish his work by rolling the creature over, careful not to get too much blood spread around. He checked the pouches on the front of its belt for anything else of value, and Christine couldn't help but feel her disgust lightened as he checked its mouth too. The reminder of Manuel almost overcame the stomach-turning sight, but not quite. He made a half-hearted attempt to retrieve each of the arrows he'd used, but the very force his bow had imparted to fling them through flesh and crack bone had also rent both of them apart. Since this one's brain matter was currently dribbling out with his cranial fluids, there wasn't much reason to bother to cleave into its chest and make double-sure.

Without further ado, the man called his horse again with that little tune, shifting the incredible variety of equipment harnessed to his shoddy-looking armor as he waited. By the time the big girl was greeting him with a friendly nuzzle, he had produced what looked like about thirty pounds of bags from beneath his cloak and shield, with still more on him just out of sight. He added what loot he'd turned up, a few plata and gilder with some random trinkets, piled that selection of his burden on the horse's load, and then looked up at Christine. The question in his eyes was obvious, but her answer was less clear in her mind.

She had to suppose this was the point were their paths parted ways, but she honestly didn't want to. It wasn't only the fact that more trolls could turn up, though at this point that was starting to seem a little paranoid of her. In truth, the main reason was painfully obvious to her. It had been almost six months since Manuel had left for one of the southern guard outposts, and four long weeks since news had come back of his patrol unit gone missing. There was little illusion for her that he could still be alive. Now here was this foreign vagabond, Link, and everything from his build to his deceptively soft interior personality reminded her of her one true love. Even Monica liked him. It had been so unexpected to have found him at all, and yet she found it strangely difficult to let go.

Apparently tired of waiting, Link pointed down the west road. "Monseille?" he asked. Monica almost fell over herself in her eagerness to help, beating her mom to the punch and agreeing that west would lead to the capital. Link nodded, and promptly plucked the little girl up by her narrow hips and sat her down on his horse's saddle, easy as he was planting a daisy. It was all Monica could do to contain her shriek of glee, but Christine felt another flare of fear at the image of her tumbling off should the great animal suddenly spook. Link was looking at her for permission, and the young mother had to think. Seeing Monica's joy, she couldn't say no.

With that settled, Link picked up the hand bars on her vegetable cart, overriding her protests with an obtuse demonstration that he couldn't understand what she was saying. Typical of a certain kind of man… and incredibly sweet. Christine concentrated on her little one as they all three started off down the road, Link maintaining sharp vigilance on the horizon as little Monica made-believe she was the lady-knight of the Mother Goddess stories, riding against the trolls' demonic servants on her noble steed.

"So, do you see anything yet?" Link asked, though obviously he held no expectation of being understood. The little girl, Monica, was giggling and cooing as she held his hawkeye over her face and scanned their surroundings. He'd more or less left the task to her, since with Monseille within sight, they were essentially home-free. And heck, it was difficult to feel like you were in danger when you were surrounded by dozens of people trudging along in utterly calm determination. Traffic on the road had picked up steadily as they got closer to the city, most of the people carrying fresh loads of perishable foods and other simple goods to market, quite in spite of the setting sun promising an approaching darkness. There had been no point in Link's lifetime where the open countryside of Hyrule had been safe enough to attract residents immediately outside the walls, and he was impressed.

Christine mumbled motherly-sounding things, reigning in the girl's somewhat hyperactive antics. The sight of a horse on the road was drawing enough attention by itself, and that confused Link for a moment. Everyone knew that the Ghentese were great lovers of horses, and bred some of the best around. And yet, he hadn't seen _one_ since passing the military camp, where the corral had been magnificently stocked. At length, it occurred to him that outside of herding cultures like the one he'd grown up in, getting a hold of a horse might be something limited to more moneyed people. Which, he supposed, made Monica's little ride even more of a treat.

Chastised for prancing on the saddle, Monica instead began to recite a charming little rhyme and gently rubbed Epona's neck. Epona took the affections very well indeed, and Link could tell the girl and horse had worked their magic on one another. At first the horse had followed on his heels with minimal enthusiasm for playing the trick-pony. Now he had to use a restraining hand here and again to keep her from bursting into a canter, which she sensed would delight the child. The last thing Link needed was to give his first Ghentese friend a heart attack by letting his horse take off with her child.

Monica completed a full verse of her rhyme, and almost to the last, the other people on the road picked up again as she started over, stunning Link. Then, by the time that verse was over, Link had joined in too, though he didn't understand a word of it. There was an incredible sense of community to the walking chorus, and time flew by as they worked through a small host of different tunes. Before the singing finally faded, they were practically to the city's gates, and the sun was brilliant on the flat plains horizon. There was a line waiting for entrance, and no one seemed to be surprised. Remembering the papers he'd paid so much to secure, he realized that he shouldn't have been, either, and promptly kicked himself in his mind.

And so, the capital of Ghent towered up in front of Link, and he considered it with a critical eye. While he pretended no particular expertise in the area of fortification, the walls of Ghent still looked rather shabby. The stone was of the brownish-grey granite common to the relatively nearby portion of the extensive Death Mountain ranges, and somehow gave the impression of being older than dirt. The face of the wall was crumbling away in places, and there were shattered spots where artillery had struck which must have been left from their last flare-up with Careda, two Princes ago. To see that damage go unrepaired told Link they either had supreme confidence in their mobile army, or they had their priorities mixed up. Of course, the ramparts were still functional, and he didn't need his hawkeye to see the armed sentries standing at each parapet.

All around, looking from just this face, the place looked about the same size as Castle Town. Of course, with so much 'safe' land over which to disperse a populace, the actual total population had to be significantly more. That thought caught his attention, and something in the back of his mind shouted for him to wake up. Link had to think for a while on just why the people had felt so safe they could build villages on the open plains if the trolls were such an active threat, and then he started putting a few points together.

The trolls lived in the south, with about a week of hard riding to the outermost rim of the southern swamp. They raided regularly, so much so that it was worth the money for such a relatively small city-state to maintain a hefty standing army to keep them in check. But for some length of time, the balance of power had kept the trolls out of this area so completely that people had put down permanent housing. Now their forward posts were pulling back for a full muster, ostensibly to attack Hyrule, and the trolls were becoming bold enough to march north to unfortified settlements in the shadow of Monseille itself.

Link had to ask, what Prince would _allow_ that? Where was the sense of uncovering your mortal enemies to make a land-grab when your local economy and cornerstone populace was going to get hammered in the meantime? What was going on in Ghent?

There was a commotion up ahead of the line, and Link heard the sound of many horses. A mumble of news passed up the grouped people in Ghentese, and the next thing he knew, Christine had snatched Monica off of Epona. He was still wondering what was going on when the line of mounted knights barged their way through the crowd and took off up the road at an quick equine march.

"Monica, get down!" Christine snapped, pulling her daughter off the horse as whispers of just who was coming reached her. Seeing a peasant child on a warhorse was liable to make whatever noble was marching down the road extremely upset. They tended to take such frivolous displays as direct insults to the dignity of the horse-warrior's discipline. Just to complete the image of propriety, Christine forcibly elbowed Link out of the way and took command of her little hand-cart back, leaving the poor young man looking quite lost. He glanced around at the sudden interest most everyone had taken in the ground or the countryside, and grabbed his horse's reins to calm her as the cavalry rode up.

Much as she'd feared, the mere presence of Link and his horse drew looks from the lord and his retinue, although evidently their business was too pressing to stop and grill him. They had little but dirty looks for a clearly penniless warrior who had the gall to travel by horse. Epona, on the other hand, although somewhat smaller than a Ghentese Charger, still drew admiring eyes from men who knew good horseflesh when they saw it. Surely it must have made the insult of just who was keeping her even more upsetting to such aloof men.

Christine had little truck for the nobles. By her moderated estimation, they were leaches who used their military power to extort money from civilians who had no choice but to look to them for protection. Village militias were the backbone of the national army, far more important than the modest force of professional soldiers who pledged their loyalty to the country's handful of barons. The threat posed by trolls meant that every able-bodied man had to be a soldier at times, and many became true veterans by the time they were little older than Link. And yet, they could not hope to hold back their mortal enemies without heavy cavalry and armament over which the wealthy held monopoly, and demanded tax to provide. They were being used coming and going, paying the lords for protection and providing the same men with a main force in their larger power-plays. It was barely tolerable, and no one knew it better than a village girl who had married a boy from a vassal family, and had seen both sides of the coin.

They were gone quickly enough, and Monica promptly asked to get back on her new friend. Seeing how close they were to the gate, Christine refused, and then had to tend to Jaques as he became fussy. Monica pouted and Link had a perplexed look, and Christine suddenly felt, rather unfairly, like she was the only adult among them. Still, it was soon their turn to face the guard checkpoint, and things would certainly be looking up then. Despite her humble living status, Christine still had friends in relatively high places.

"Au suivant," barked a guard in full-plate with a masking visor, and Link stepped up into queue. The guard seemed speechless when he first considered Link, an armed foreigner of obviously questionable repute from first glance. To the eyes of a guard, he had trouble written all over him, a different interpretation of the subtle energy everyone seemed to at least subconsciously notice about him. Christine saw him prepare to give a hearty brow-beating and turn Link out on his ear, but recognized the personalized insignia on his shoulder plate before he could get started.

"Bonjour, Monsieur Terence!" Christine gave him a hearty greeting and her best smile. He was sidetracked from tearing into Link quite completely, proceeding to startle the young foreigner by turning from him to her.

"Madame! What a pleasure it is to see you again! The sergeant will be overjoyed to hear you are back in the city!" He bowed in the Ghentese style, quite a feat in full-plate, and people in the line behind them started to either complain or catcall as they delayed their progress. "Now, if you will allow me to eject this foreigner, I will escort you to the guardhouse personally. The sergeant would have nothing less than to see you right away—his wife and children will also be ecstatic, I'm sure."

"Oh yes, I would dearly love to see Martin and the kids, but I must ask you, Monsieur Terence, please do not treat Monsieur Link with such haste!"

"Link—you mean this Hylian mongrel?" Terence was clearly aghast that this beautiful matron of Ghent had any association at all with the rough-cut vagrant currently watching their conversation with interest, if not comprehension. "If I were to let a clearly penniless bandit like him into the city—why—"

"Monsieur Terence, I assure you, Monsieur Link may not look like much, but he is no bandit to be dismissed. I owe him my life, and so do Sergeant Martin's niece and nephew!"

"What?" The man couldn't believe his ears, and now everyone within earshot was riveted on their conversation.

"As surely as I stand here, we were set upon by troll veraq-riders near the crossroad. Only Link's intervention kept us from their cook pots."

"TROLLS?" The word shot down the queue like a lightning bolt. It was not a subject anyone in Ghent would ever lie about, and the news that troll raiders had struck this far north harrowed many to their very bones. Several unburdened people left the line and made varying speeds back to their homes to check on family and friends, and nearly as many literally dumped their goods outright to do the same. Within the hour, news of the intrusion would have spread everywhere in the city and over half the surrounding countryside.

"Trolls—are you certain?" Terence asked, redundantly. Of course she was sure, she'd _been_ _there_, but she could understand his reluctance to believe such awful news.

"Monsieur Terence, their dead bodies now decorate the crossroads." Her voice was terribly grave, and the helmed head nodded stiffly.

"Much will have to be done—not the least of which is getting these people either inside, or back home. I will invoke emergency powers and clear the queue. Please, you and your friend wait until I can escort you to the guardhouse. Because he is a foreigner, we will still have to check his papers, and the sergeant will definitely want to talk to you all. Oh—so much to do!"

Indeed, the area around them, fallen into lazy routine over the course of a long day, was now furious with refreshed activity and nervous energy. A troll incursion this far north hadn't occurred since Prince Philip had taken the throne and established a policy of containment at the southern outposts. The decision had simultaneously made him hated by the lords, who suddenly had much more work to do, and a hero to the people, who migrated north in droves and finally knew life without constant fear. That relief from fear had, unfortunately, bred carelessness. Now there were homes aplenty without a shred of defense, and no one knew that more surely than the guards who now had the impossible job of covering everyone against random, independently-operating pockets of troll aggression.

Link watched the gate area erupt into activity with detached interest as he stood outside the loop of information. Twice-damned language barrier. When he'd felt that guard about to give him a treatment ten times worse than at the border post, he'd feared that he'd wasted his time buying papers, and he'd have to sneak into this city illegally anyway. He'd then watched in pleasant surprise as Christine intervened on his behalf, and had been impressed by her influence. Of course, when the shout of 'troll' went up and down the line, he'd figured where at least _part_ of that came from. It was good—he'd intended to inform the local authority himself and get people on guard. Those open-range villages were sitting ducks to a quick-moving raid force that was willing to loot only what could be carried, or perhaps, was more interested in merely 'foraging' for a night's meal and then hiding in the wilderness.

"Come on!" the guard who had almost booted him out of town—Christine had called him Terence—snapped at Link in thickly accented Hylian. He'd been directing most of the activity, which had included expediting entrance for everyone who'd wanted it. Link had tried to capitalize on that, but Christine of all people had held him back. Apparently there was more she had thought he should stick around for, and this must be it. "Let's go, Monsieur Foreign Swordsman, you have made some influential friends, and now you must meet them! My name is Corporal Olivar Terence. This woman who speaks so highly of you is Christine D'tennon. Her husband is brother to Sergeant Commander D'tennon, first officer of the Walls and Gates Division. He would most certainly desire to have a word with you after he has met with his relatives."

Before he could get a word in edgewise, Link was hustled into town by the Corporal and two of his men. Epona was led aside to be stabled in the military quartering district, with his baggage to be delivered to the Maiden's Kiss, an inn owned by Christine's sister-in-law, the Sergeant Commander's wife. Of course, Link didn't get any say in these decisions, and he had an idea of about how poorly the town guard, firmly in this family's corner, might react if he were to object to their 'hospitality.'

So it happened that Link was bum-rushed to the door of a very official-looking building. Christine and her baby arrived in much more leisurely style, and Monica was literally skipping through the streets. They disappeared into the building, and Link was left alone with less-than-friendly soldiers. The soldiers ignored him at first and fell to heated discussion, which was fine except that they'd yet to let loose their bouncer's grips under his arms.

With little else to do, Link took a look around. Now that they were inside the walls, the place was essentially Castle Town with a different language. Oh sure, there were a few dozen other small differences, but the sense of familiarity was unshakeable. It got Link to wondering if city's everywhere were more or less alike—could he go to Terez or Careda and find the same types of people living the same busy lives, with only the climate and the soundtrack to tell the difference? It was definitely worth a look, and a part of him warmed to the idea of more widespread globe-trotting.

After a bit of back-and-forth over his head in Ghentese, the two guards he'd allowed to 'handle' him this far dumped him unceremoniously back to his own recognizance, and the Corporal turned him around.

"I will need your entry papers!" he said, not looking particularly happy to be talking to him.

"After all that-?" Link began to complain, but struck up against the soldier's unsympathetic glower. Rather than argue, Link presented the papers in question, and the guard quickly checked and stamped them. He looked up with relief on his face, apparently pleasantly surprised that they were genuine, and he wouldn't be forced to 'look the other way' in this delicate situation. Link was glad too—he didn't want to get anyone _else_ in trouble over this mission. It was only _himself_ he was actively attempting to endanger, since there was little better way to find adventure.

With his papers checked, Link was directed with a bit more tact into the government building, where Christine and her family had already gone. Inside had the musty, official feeling of a genuine military tradition in edifice form, and he imagined that the tinge in the air was what salutes smelled like. A few more steps took him through a reception area, an office complex stuffed with uniformed people lacking armor or weapons or even a sense of the knowledge to _use_ a weapon, and then into a very central office. The instant he was through the door, the entire sense of the place changed, and for a very obvious reason.

There in the little office, sitting behind a rather shabby desk in a rather nice chair, a huge man with an overpowering mustache and curly brown hair dominated the space. By a quick estimate, Link judged that the man would stand just over seven feet if he got up, and would be wider at his shoulder than Monica was tall. Only the startlingly bright smile sitting beneath his mustache kept his massive presence from stifling the room, instead doing the opposite, and actually bullying shadows out of every corner. The reason for the smile was evident enough, with baby Jaques bouncing on his knee and Monica trying her best to fit a hug around one of his titanic arms. Christine sat in a corner chair and suppressed the laughter that filled her heart as she watched the homey scene.

"Monsieur Link!" Monica shouted, as she saw him enter, and ran over. She took him forcefully by the hand and guided him to a chair, then looked disheartened when he glanced at the cushy, high-backed affair quite skeptically.

"I'm sorry," Link felt terrible about this simple faux pas, "I'd sit down, only—"

"Non, non," the huge man had a huge voice as he dismissed Link's embarrassment, "I have had to carry heavy equipment over long journeys myself. I still remember the first time I forgot I was wearing my gear harness and sat down in a particularly fine chair. The owner of that Inn threatened to make me _lick_ it clean. Please, feel free to stand, I'm sure the cleaning staff will appreciate your discretion. Also, please, allow me to introduce myself."

The man stood up, palming Jacques into one giant hand and holding him to his expansive chest. Link had been wrong, for the Sergeant Commander was much closer to seven foot six inches. He was the biggest human that Link had even heard of, and could probably have sumo wrestled a full-grown goron while the _rock_-_man_ was wearing iron boots.

"I am Sergeant Commander Martin D'tannan, and I believe I owe you my eternal debt of gratitude, Monsieur Hylian. Monica has been filling my ear with the most incredible tails… apparently you slew fifteen trolls with nothing but your bare hands, your winning personality, and your super-horse." Link chuckled, and the people who didn't speak Hylian all showed that usual human curiosity for a joke spoken in a way that kept them out of the loop. Be it just out of earshot, or in a different language, humans couldn't help but wonder if the joke had been on them.

"It was _five_ trolls, and I mostly used a bow," Link clarified, "Although on the matter of my super-horse, I am guilty as charged. Epona is getting extra oats tonight for the lizard-cat she trampled." It was the Sergeant's turn to laugh, and now everyone really was wondering what they were talking about. Monica made some impatient-sounding questions and was shushed by her mother and uncle at the same time.

"Mmm, yes, horses and veraqs have never gotten along," he said, recovering from his humor. "Well, even accounting for your remarkable steed, it is a truly impressive warrior who could overcome five-to-one odds in a cavalry battle. My dear relatives were most fortunate that you happened by when you did."

"_They're_ fortunate?" Link asked, striving to minimize his role and hopefully dodge questions about incredible warriors from Hyrule, "I doubt I would have even gotten into the city here if Christine hadn't been so well connected. Apparently letting my wanderlust carry me to Ghent was not the best luck I've ever had. I can't understand a thing people are saying, and half of everyone I meet seems to discount me the moment they see my ears!"

"Ah, yes," Martin looked downcast, not hard for a man who was, at least physically, above _everything_, "Please do not think too poorly of my countrymen, Monsieur Link. In the best of times, our pride is held dearly in our hearts, and of late… of late, we have all been on edge." Link added no comment as the almost inhumanly big man's eyes became distant, contemplative, and his patience was rewarded when he eventually decided to elaborate. "It is no small thing for troll raiders to venture this far from the swamps. Perhaps when I was a lad it might have happened two or three times in a year, but this is the first sighting so close to the capital in nearly two _decades_. And still… one does not have to look far to see what has made them so bold."

Ah, here was _true_ pay dirt. Link clammed up and gave the man an even, cautious look. He was a wanderer who'd meandered this way on a whim, not an agent with vested interest in digging out intelligence on Ghentese military disposition that this man was uniquely placed to give. Suddenly his only concern was to be polite to a relative of the new friends he'd made.

"I think, coming from Hyrule, you must have noticed the army mustering in the northeast plains, non?" Martin phrased the question like he was embarrassed to admit it, unsure of how far Link's patriotism might tinge his reaction. When he didn't cut in with a sneer or snide affirmation, but simply nodded, Martin went on. "A month and two weeks ago, Prince Philip issued a command for general muster of all armed forces. He then gave us the location to meet, and said not a word more. He gave no reasons and no excuses, nor any indication of where we would next be moving, but when the Prince says go—we go!"

"I'm familiar with the concept of monarchy," Link said, not unkindly. While his unconscious, ingrained reactions prior to _truly_ meeting Zelda might give his thoughts the lie, intellectually, at least, he held little truck with the concept. Still, he'd seen the fire that burned in the heart of true believers like Ashei, back home. The words of the monarch were one step away from the words of the goddesses themselves. "But sir, if you'll forgive my asking—why has the army been sitting there for so long? Why not order it somewhere?"

"Hmph, well, that would be because the muster is hardly half-finished." The look on Martin's face was sour with curdled disgust for the whole matter. "Militia divisions from all across the south frontier have repeatedly refused to report for the muster unless some very good reasons are provided. Just a short time ago, Baron Papile and his retainers left to carry orders of censure to their commanders for high treason. Imagine! It has become treason to protect one's home!"

"Yuck," Link resisted the urge to spit, "That's not a pretty business. Any fool could see that calling a muster up there leaves quite an open flank down south. I can't imagine what the troll advance would be like if those fellows _hadn't_ stayed home."

"Oui." Martin held up baby Jaques and tickled at his belly. The infant burbled happily, and some of the harsh gravity lifted from the giant man's demeanor. "There is simply no excusing such a move, certainly not without a reason. And yet, I would still follow it without objection, if not for all the odd signs."

"What now?" Link's interest was definitely piqued at this, and the dramatic way Martin was telling the tale meant he didn't have to worry about breaking cover. What he was implying was intriguing stuff, in the most literal sense, and anyone would be interested. Meanwhile, Christine sensed the grave direction the conversation was taking, and she cleared her throat meaningfully. When she had their attention, she nodded to the children and gave them _looks_. It was not a _look_ that a man could ignore without earning future grief for his trouble.

"Non, non, this is neither the time nor place to speak of such things," Martin said, retreating quickly and handing his nephew back to the mother. "You will all retire to my lovely Miranda's hospitality while I spend the evening organizing things for the inevitable panic. Trolls—here! It will be a _pandemonium_. Please, do make yourself at home, Monsieur Link. My wife also speaks Hylian, perhaps she could bridge the gap between you and my little ones? I must get to work."

"Of course." Link said. Martin nodded, and then turned from him to speak with Christine in rapid Ghentese.

Link stood and smothered his urge to curse. He'd been so close—he could practically have reached out and touched the answers to his little mystery. This giant, Martin, most definitely had some kind ulterior motive. Why else be so candid with an utter stranger on such short notice? Still… Link had to admit that there was no immediate rush. The army wasn't going anywhere, for whatever reason, and Martin had something in mind for him, something that might bust this whole case wide open. It truly looked as though all he had to do was sit back and let his Ghentese 'contacts' make the next move.

How had he happened into just the right people to get the work done? Well, he wasn't sure he had, yet. But certainly, it couldn't be _fate_. It was just a happy coincidence, with their odd frequency of late being a lucky streak. Or hey—he'd just done some good deeds—maybe this was karma? Certainly there was no sense of predestination as there had once been, and he _liked_ it that way. Goddesses willing, it'd _stay_ that way.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

I have no regrets regarding my attempt to enrich the story by injecting multiple real world languages to enhance the sense of cultural diversity between fictional nations. One of my pet peeves about most fiction aimed at young adults is the way everyone speaks the same language without any explanation of why this unusual circumstance has come to be. If there's some kind of cultural background explanation for why everyone speaks the same language, I'm okay, but if there isn't, I want to punch somebody. That's just me, I'm a nerd, go figure. Then again, I'm also lazy, and couldn't imagine spending the time it would take to make up a convincing fictional language for a fanficiton project. So, French. Where'd that come from, you ask? Well, about the time I thought up this story, I was heavily into Medieval II Total War, wherein the French were my favorite faction to play. All those late-game, deep tech-tree units were badass, and they weren't broken easy like the English. As you might expect, using an American video game as my full exposure to the French language before trying to write cross-lingual fiction, even in the briefest possible manner, was a huge mistake. I received something like five times as many comments correcting my word use and poorly constructed pronunciation jokes than any other kind over these chapters. Or maybe it just seems that way. We all know how much people like to correct the errors made by strangers on the internet.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I made Martin a giant. It wound up having absolutely no influence on the plot of the story whatsoever. It probably breaks some kind of cardinal rule of fiction to give a supporting character one trait that totally defines his description and then have that trait never come up in the story in any meaningful way. I guess it's sort of like making a character blind or deaf and then never having that deficiency play a part in the plot afterwards. Then again, the 'law of conservation of detail' is mostly just for TV and other visual media. In my experience, people are much more willing to put up with 'red herring' details in books.


	6. Disciple of the Lady Hero

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 6: Disciple of the Lady Hero**

**Maiden's Kiss Inn, Monseille, The Principality of Ghent**

"… what it's like when the sun comes up over the icy crowns of Snowtop," Link continued his anecdote, as he sat on a stool and leaned back against the bar countertop of Maiden Kiss Inn's large tavern, "the light comes filtering through the glaciers, reflects a million times from the crystal slopes, and shines down into the frozen valley. The permanent blanket of snow is like a giant spread of pure white canvas, and the tangles of wavering lights dance across it, making it glitter like an endless lake of diamonds."

Miranda D'tannan listened in rapt attention as she cleaned mugs behind the bar, quickly repeating his words in Ghentese for the benefit of those in the audience who couldn't understand Hylian, which was _all_ of them. At the moment, it was well into the peek hours of late evening and the bar was packed from wall to wall with off-duty soldiers, day-laborers, and other patrons of that unrefined variety. To the last, they were riveted on Link's story, and listened to Miranda tell it with a quiet attentiveness as they nursed drinks. Such restraint was literally unheard of from their lot, and it had taken the hostess some time to get used to the change.

"Of course, that's on the rare day that it's sunny. I spent about a week up there, and it was only that one dawn when it was clear. Every other day, the snow came down in a great white mass that blotted out the world as near as six steps away from you. Even though it was spring in the valleys I'd left behind, the mountaintops were colder than a stone privy on a rampart during a windy day in February."

By the sudden, uproarious laughter (especially from the soldiers who'd had wall duty on windy February nights), Link's small joke translated to Ghentese very well. Of course, it wouldn't have been the same if his interpreter hadn't also gotten the timing right and kept a straight face while she translated. Miranda D'tannan managed it perfectly, without even batting an eye, and without stopping her progress on the endless supply of used beer mugs in need of cleaning behind the bar. She was a people person, and this was her element.

The owner and proprietor of the Maiden's Kiss Inn, one of the oldest established businesses in Monseille, was a stout woman built around a long neck, a generous bosom, and wide hips. Because she was narrow everywhere else, this made her one long string of rolling curves, and one of the most naturally beautiful women Link had ever laid eyes on. Her brunette hair was gathered up in a cook's bun, but would normally have fallen around her shoulders. Her eyes were the normal brown to be found in Ghent, but had that same always-laughing quality that Link had noticed here and there among the few people he'd met since crossing the border. She was wearing a simple green dress under a dirty old apron, and looked every inch the working lady as she stood behind her busy bar.

In a vague sense, she reminded him of Telma from back home, only years younger and without the older woman's subtle air of faded sadness. Link had never pried into Telma's past, but just from the way her eyes looked when the bar had quieted down for the night, he imagined it checkered with failed romances and broken hearts. If that was true, it was where Miranda diverged so wildly.

From what he'd learned through their brief conversations, she'd been married for twelve years, since she was eighteen, and still loved her 'big huggy-bear' as much as the day they'd met. She had a son Monica's age by the name of Brenton, and a second son two years behind them called Robin. Both were growing like weeds, but neither seemed to have gotten their father's 'little oddness,' as she put it. When Martin D'tennon was just two years past Brenton's age, he'd already stood as tall as Link.

As Link considered his hostess and sipped his weak beer, one of the men in the audience shouted a question. Miranda gave him a flippant answer that sent the whole bar into another round of laughter. Link smiled along with them, but leaned back with a nod toward the lady bartender.

"He asked," she translated, as a round of conversation erupted around the bar, "What is a glacier?" She paused to answer a few drink orders and shout at her cooking staff in the kitchen one room over, and then returned to Link. "So I told him—and I know Monsieur Gemonte and his wife quite well—that a glacier is a hunk of ice so huge and frosty, it makes _Madame_ Gemonte look like a petite little snowball."

Link gave her a smile, and she went back to work. A little time passed, and soon a cry went up for another story from the foreign traveler. Link said quite simply that he was parched, and would require another drink before he could consider speaking more of his wanderings. Once translated, that got another general laugh, and the burly man next to him, a carpenter fresh from the shop by the sawdust in his hair and padding the folds of his shirt, slapped him hard on the back and put up a few copper coins for his next beer. It was an old technique—Link knew he need never pay for a drink in his life, so long as he continued to go where others dared not and bring back stories of the lands they might never know of otherwise.

So, for the next hour, Link told one tale after another about the vast lands of Hyrule. The beer was not too strong, but it was quite pleasant, and it lubricated his remembering of the long, long trail he'd left across the continent. He spoke for a while of the glittering Faeore River, home of the majestic zoras, and the way it emptied into the clear perfection of Lake Hylia. He spoke of Death Mountain, and all the ranges surrounding its smoking volcanic bowels, and of the gorons and their great wrestling matches that shook the very earth. As the room got steadily more drunken, he recalled his journey across the Guerdo Desert, with its endless dunes, blazing hot days, and freezing cold nights. The crowd called for more still, but Link finally turned them down, citing a need to concentrate on his drinking. That got everyone focused back on their own drinking, and the house had rumbled into its old noisy self in no time.

"You speak very well," Miranda told him when he turned back to lean over onto the bar. "And you have seen so much. It must be an incredibly interesting life, to journey around."

"Sure, it's interesting," he agreed. Then he felt a twitch crease his face, and had to qualify that. "It's also incredibly dangerous, incredibly uncomfortable, and punctuated by incredibly poor eating," Link told her, speaking from his calloused feet rather than his adventurous heart, "but at least it gets me free drinks when I stop into town. By the way, this is damn good," and he proved it to her by draining his mug.

"Merci," she took it away and attended to her customers as Link settled into a comfortable slouch on the bar. It struck him as odd that she would work as much as she did, what with her husband's high station and her obvious affluence. Still, he supposed everyone had to do something, and the woman was certainly quite good at doing _this_.

The evening proceeded in raucous routine around Link, no matter what panic-inducing rumor that had touched the city. 'Troll' was consistently the word he could pick out of the conversations thundering all around him, and it seemed to be the topic of every discussion. And yet, these were city dwellers almost to the last, and their fear seemed to be quite a bit more tempered than the open terror of those that lived on the countryside. He could imagine their discussions had little to do with immediate danger of lost lives and property and leaned more toward what conditions around town would be like when the inevitable refugee migration arrived. Link tried not to hold it against them, but that smug sense of invulnerability held by people living behind walls had always galled him.

There was a sudden tug at Link's cloak, and he turned around to find no one there. Then he looked way, _way_ down, and there was Monica. She held out a bowl of steaming-hot soup in potholders that didn't even almost fit, and Link couldn't help but smile at the sight. He accepted the gift, mimicking the word for 'thanks' that he'd figured out for sure, and felt a little bit warmer for the way she glowed at his gratitude. He turned back to the bar to attack the delicious smelling vegetable soup, and was almost startled when Monica scaled a bar stool almost as tall as she was and took a seat next to him.

Miranda saw the girl take a seat at the bar, though her head barely cleared the counter, and glowered at her. Monica said something to her, and the older woman laughed, shaking her head, and aborted any attempt to scold her away from the seat she'd stolen from paying customers. Link chose not to pry. Soon enough, another call came up out of the corner toward Link, and it was shortly echoed by a dozen other voices. Link slurped down the rest of his soup and looked back to his hostess for a translation.

"Ah, now the wastrels want another story," she said, apologizing for her obnoxious customers with her tone, "They want to know if that sword hung by the door is all for show, or if there is truly a man from Hyrule who knows how to fight."

"Oh?" Link did not have to feign disinterest. Although fighting and combat in all its many forms accounted for about forty percent of what he thought about when he wasn't actively concentrating on something, he still _hated_ to talk about it. He had tried with a few of his friends back in Hyrule, but usually didn't get further than, "I countered his right-arc median lunge with a rising shield clip and followed through with a full-radius slash along the one-five line," before the other person's eyes glazed over.

The truth was that Link's way of thinking about combat was highly technical, with every swing and block cataloged in his mind. Each maneuver of a fight was classified under strict terminology, most of which he'd made up himself, lacking a martial education more formal than Rusl's 'this is how you swing it, boy,' masterpieces. It hadn't _always_ been like that, but Link couldn't really identify when it had started, except that its roots were well before he'd met Midna. A part of him wondered if that habit of his contributed to how quickly he'd picked up various martial techniques once he'd been exposed to the wide world of combat, but he'd never had time nor sufficient motive to really look at that idea.

"S'il vous plait?" Monica tugged at his sleeve, bringing his attention to her big puppy-dog eyes. Apparently, she'd sensed his reluctance, and had a vested interest in hearing tales of combat. The effect was crippling, and Link acquiesced with a laugh as he turned away before those big eyes could pluck his heartstrings right out. A small cheer went up around the bar at what a good sport he was being, and Monica bounced on her stool in excitement as Link put a hand to his chin and thought about how to proceed.

Basically, all he would have to do is tell the stories as close to how he told of his travels as possible, leaving out the technical details and editing for believability. Scale would be simple enough—most anyone would assume he was exaggerating for effect when he spoke of wreaking a bloody path through an entire bullblin war party and their fleet of trained kargarocs. He had only to avoid mention of ancient temples and towering twili monstrosities, and he had no desire to speak of any of that anyway.

"Okay." Link began, and the remainder of the room that was sober enough to care quieted down as Miranda called for attention. "The plains of Hyrule are absolutely rotten with bullblins, and I've run afoul of them on more than one occasion. Now, a bullblin is a nasty little bugger…"

Hours later, the bar had more or less emptied out for the night. The building was also an inn, after all, and Miranda could hardly afford to lose the business of overnight lodgers by keeping her drinking customers around till all hours of the morning. Most people cleared out on their own, heading to different bars or back home, depending mostly on how early they had work. Within the space of an hour, there was no one left but Link, the staff, and an older fellow snoring away at a corner table. Monica had been asleep for hours, having nodded off partway through the last story Link had recited, a delighted smile on her lips as she slumped against the high bar, head on her arms.

"Sorry for being such a burden on your hospitality," Link told Miranda as she racked up clean mugs to be stored, referring to all the translating she'd had to do over the evening.

"Non, it was no burden. Your stories were very interesting, and the customers buy more when they're entertained. Mmm, which reminds me—" She reached into the money belt over her apron she'd used to register drink payments and pulled out a sleeve of coins. She counted out three silver coins, called 'plata' by those in these western areas that used them, and set them on the bar in front of Link. "These are for you, mon ami."

"Uh, what?" Link gave her a look he realized must be pretty stupid, but honestly hadn't a clue what she was talking about.

"Now, you listen here, Monsieur Link," Miranda said as she rounded the bar and took a stool on the other side of the sleeping Monica, "you saved the life of our little swan today." She pulled Monica out of the stool and bundled her into a sleeping embrace in her arms. The little girl stirred slightly, and then settled onto her aunt's breast. "I hope you would not think me so ungrateful as to charge you for drinks after that. Those coins are what your storytelling earned you. I thought about simply leaving you to the drinks as the balance but," she narrowed a knowing glance at Link, "your appreciation of my alcohol doesn't seem to have 'taken' as it does for most of my customers. I could hardly cheat you of the coin."

It took Link a long moment to realize what she was talking about. Then he looked at the coins again and did some mental accounting. That much silver would buy about _ten_ pints of beer. He hadn't been counting himself, what with the way his audience had made sure his mug was filled every time he'd emptied it. His eyes bulged as he reached the conclusion of that insane number. It seemed impossible that it had been so much, not the least because he felt pretty close to stone-cold sober right now. Certainly he'd made quite a few trips to the head, but… _ten pints_? Even in small beer, even spread out over the last five hours, that was enough alcohol to floor two men, and Link had lost what little buzz he'd gotten within five minutes of setting down his last flagon.

"Uh, well, about that—" he fumbled for some lie. He'd been so caught up in his stories that he'd forgotten to pace himself. This wasn't his first encounter with his unusual alcohol tolerance, and he should have known better. It was a totally imbecilic mistake.

"Oh, there's no need to explain it," Miranda assured him, as she rocked her little almost-daughter in her lap and considered him with knowing, conspiratorial eyes. "We all have our little… oddities. I was shocked that you didn't fall over after your fifth, but with the way you spread them out, I doubt anyone else was keeping count. Still, I must admit, it certainly confirms what Christine said about you."

"What did she say?" Link followed the conversational bait as he wondered if he could trust these people not to pry into just how 'odd' he really was. Clearly, none of them were stupid, but he hadn't expected to have them onto him so quickly. At the same time, her immediate acceptance of that little eccentricity he'd let slip was just _weird_. He'd honestly expected something a bit more… theatrical.

"She said… that you were _special_." Miranda gave him a wan smile, and Link did what he could to return it without grimacing. 'Special' was exactly what he didn't want to be known as. Given his choice, he would simply fade from attention.

"Where is Christine, anyway?" Link changed the subject gracelessly, "Surely she's not still at market?" The young woman had run off to negotiate for a market stall hours ago, more or less as soon as her babies were settled in with their aunt. It was past midnight now, and there had been no word from her.

"Ach," Miranda made a dismissive wave, "That girl… she will be the death of us yet. I have no doubt that she is still at market; she must be pestering the all-night businesses to buy more of her vegetables. Considering just what enterprises stay open all night, I can hardly envy her that bent of determination."

"Huh…" Link took a casual glance around Miranda's fine establishment, and then his eyes wandered down to Monica's bare feet. He was careful to make no comment.

"Please, do not think poorly of us, Monsieur Link," Miranda pleaded, his question clear on his face despite his cautions. "Martin has tried… he as pleaded and argued until there were no more words, but his brother is simply too proud to accept our help. It was always important that he provide for his family himself, and he would never accept money from 'his brother's rich wife.'" Miranda seemed frustrated by that, and Link could imagine it would be difficult to watch your family struggle through poverty over an issue of pride.

"Christine and he were always two birds of a feather, and she agrees with his efforts to maintain independence completely. For years, she has worked enthusiastically to supplement what he makes as a lieutenant to Sergeant Commander Beauten of the First Infantry Corps, even though it means they are separated for long periods. Although I feel it is no coincidence that she lives so close to us, it is all I can do to get her to accept the help that she does."

"Her husband is a commanding soldier, too?" Link asked, starting to connect the dots of this situation. "But a lower ranking one?"

"Martin and Manuel are both from an old family of nobles' vassals," Miranda explained, "With their father being who he was, Goddess rest his soul, their career paths were never in question. They both learned the job of leading men quite well, but Manuel was always so headstrong, so sure of his own sense of justice, that he never grasped the politics. He offended more than one of the barons he worked under, and that meant his equal merit was never able to take him as far as Martin."

"Ah, I think I begin to see the picture," Link said, and he did. Manuel was a squeaky wheel, unhappy with the class system. Link had met the type before, mostly small business owners in Castle Town who were facing domination by the bigger merchant families. That the man had married a peasant farmer and refused to accept money from his brother, who apparently hadn't had trouble climbing the ranks, and had married into a modestly old-money family, all held with the same pattern.

"Still, all that will have to change soon enough," Miranda said, looking troubled. Link staunchly refused to pry, and the woman eventually looked up, trying to see if she was bothering him with her rambling on about family trouble. She continued only when she saw his sympathetic look. "Manuel has gone missing, down at the border forts. Without his wages to support her, Christine will surely lose her home. Oh, she refuses to admit it, and tries to sell ever more vegetables. I think she believes that if she keeps their little home running, he will return to us. Doing as we have begged—coming to work here—would be, to her, like admitting that Manuel is gone forever. None of us wish to give up hope, but…" Miranda trailed off. She was clutching Monica to her chest like a girl with a beloved doll, chasing away the monsters in the dark.

"Well, I wouldn't give up too quickly, myself," Link told her. He gave Miranda his most reassuring look and gestured toward the little girl in her arms. "Any man who could sire a firecracker like this little terror probably has his act together. I wouldn't be surprised if he was doing everything in his power to return home, even as we sit here talking."

Miranda smiled at him, wiping away a stray bit of moisture that had welled up by her eye while she worried for her family. She was about to say more, but the relative silence of the closed tavern was broken suddenly by the door opening and the noise of people rushing in from the cool night. The heavy steps were unmistakable, and both Link and Miranda looked over to see Martin stomp in from the dark. Huddled under his shadow was an exhausted-looking Christine.

Link kept his seat and took an interest in the décor as Miranda hustled over to greet them, and there was several minutes of tired conversation as the family met. The discussion went through ranges of emotion and intensity as they talked, probably about Martin's work of securing the city and Christine's retail toils. Before too long, Christine left out the back door with Monica in her arms. If the pattern Miranda had described held true, they were heading to the cheaper rooms and staff quarters in the back of the building. He probably should have felt snubbed to have gotten no acknowledgment from her, but then, he understood she was dead on her feet, and probably hadn't even noticed him sitting in the next room.

With the younger woman departed, Martin and Miranda had a longer, quieter conversation right there in the doorway. Link didn't hazard a guess as to what they were talking about now, but he had a sinking feeling that it related to what Miranda had gleaned of him during the long evening. Link just twirled one of his silver plata between his fingers and waited. At length, Miranda approached again, the towering shape of Martin filling the entire doorframe behind her.

"Monsieur Link…" she began, "my husband and I were wondering if we might have a word with you before you retired for the night. It is about… business."

"Business, huh?" Link asked, immediately on guard. If his cover of 'a down-on-his-luck wanderer' were even remotely intact, they wouldn't have any 'business' with him. Vagabonds were not a well-liked lot by people who lived rooted in one place, nor by the soldiers that protected them. Frankly he was a little surprised to have gotten the reception he had, even after saving some of their family. Of course, it could go back to what Martin was hinting at earlier… "Well, I've got time if you do." He made no mention of the late hour, nor protest of ignorance about what they could want with him. There was little point in insulting their intelligence at this point, since they obviously knew him to be more than he claimed.

"Please, come this way," Miranda gestured through the doorway Martin was blocking, out toward the front door and the communal area of the inn. Link stood and followed her and her husband through a few of the inn's staff-only corridors until they reached a nondescript door. He was ushered inside, and found himself in a plain little room with what looked like a card table under the light of a single lamp. Martin came in behind him and seemed to fill every corner of extra space, with Miranda squeezing in as his shadow. They took seats and had Link take another, and then another man came in and shut the door. Link was startled, having heard no one else following, and began to wonder just what the hell was going on.

"Monsieur Link," Martin said quickly, noticing his nervous look, "might I introduce you to Duke Orlouge, supreme commander of city defenses in Monseille."

Link goggled, his eyes jerking back to the newcomer by shocked reflex. He didn't know much about rank or the echelons of authority, but he knew 'duke' was the highest title a man could hold short of 'prince' or 'king.' He was in the presence of a serious local bigwig, and that made the air of strained secrecy put out by everyone there all the more grave.

"Bonjour," the Duke said in a subdued tone. He was a thin man with a serious face and very focused, very tired eyes. His black hair was cut short and he was all-around well groomed. His simple, high-quality tunic made him look more like a mildly affluent merchant than the crème of Ghentese nobility. "I have heard much about you, Monsieur Link, though I fear I must certainly have you at a disadvantage. I must apologize for the surprise, the subject at hand is not one that lends itself to open discussion, nor much attending to the tactful handling of all parties."

"Mmm," Link made a neutral sound as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. He made no secret of his discontent, but communicated his acceptance that here was a serious issue. He said nothing.

"Well, I can't say that I am shocked by your reaction," the Duke said, smiling, "but please here us out. When Martin, my most trusted subordinate, told me that he'd stumbled into the perfect mercenary for our mission, I thought—"

"Mercenary?" Link asked, before he could stop himself. He'd known they'd seen more in him than a mere traveler, but he hadn't seen _that_ coming at all. Fortunately, they took his tone of shock as a denial rather than the first he'd heard of the idea.

"Come, come, Monsieur, there is no need to keep up pretense," the Duke assured him, and Link had to be grateful that the man's mind was made up, and he hadn't blown his cover all over again with his outburst. "We searched your belongings quite thoroughly before we quartered your horse. Your equipment and the proficiency you've show with weapons are a bit much for a mere 'wanderer,' don't you agree?"

"Heh, well, you all found me out quick enough," Link admitted. He did everything in his power to suppress his relief that they'd manufactured a new cover for him all by themselves. It could be wonderful when people jumped to conclusions, at least when it worked out in your favor. If they'd jumped to the conclusion of 'spy,' he wouldn't have been quite so pleased. He also blessed the foresight that kept everything he possessed that might ever be remotely incriminating tucked away in the equipment packs that never left his person.

"Oui, you could hardly believe our relief, to have a man of demonstrated ability arrive, exactly at our hour of greatest need." The Duke didn't look relieved, but then again, Link doubted the Duke ever expressed much of anything with that sharp, cool face. "We have a job for you, and while it is a tall order, the pay is most generous to compensate. We are offering fifty gilders in advance, and another fifty gilders should you succeed."

One Hundred Gilders! Link's eye twitched as he considered that sum in greater detail. A gilder was a golden coin minted by the Trade Federation of Careda, used all across the westlands and even kept by Hylian financiers when bulky rupees were impractical. By his nearest reasoning, one hundred gilders amounted to about three thousand rupees, or enough money for Link to buy a moderately large business, a significantly sized farm, or a suit of the finest, most luxurious plate armor currently produced.

"Well, uh, this is all very sudden," Link said, searching for time to think. Depending on the nature of the 'mission,' everything he'd been working toward here in Ghent could go sour very fast. Earlier, Martin had been mumbling about a problem with the Prince and dissatisfaction with the order to muster. Now here was one of the Prince's top men making cloak-and-dagger overtones. What kind of job was a foreign mercenary freshly arrived in town best suited for? "I don't think I could promise myself to any contract before hearing at least _some_ details."

"Of course, we would not dream of asking you to accept a blind contract," the Duke said, sounding very much like he'd been hoping Link would have let greed rule his caution. "However, you must understand, this is a matter of some confidentiality. If we explain to you even some of the terms and you do not accept, you will be required to leave the city at once, and will not be welcome to return. Now, Monsieur Link, knowing this, what do you say?"

Link paused, considering his options. On the one hand, this could be a golden opportunity to progress on the job he was already doing: collecting intelligence on the Ghentese military and why it was aimed at Hyrule. On the other hand, if it was totally unrelated, or utterly unacceptable to Link, and he was ejected from the city, he might never get the answers he needed. Certainly he could conceive of a way to sneak in, if it came to that, but that was an awful risky prospect. He had no fear, just as he'd never had a moment's fear since he'd first left Ordon on his fated journey. There was simply a weighing of options and a measure of what best suited his interests.

"I will at least hear what you have to say," Link decided, "If I have to move on a little earlier than I expected, then so be it. I doubt I'll get a better offer for work than this, in any case."

"Very well," the Duke agreed, and Martin and Miranda both looked pleased to have made progress. Apparently, whatever they were working on was of no small importance. "Martin, if you would?"

"Of course," the giant said, setting his massive elbows on the table and folding his hands in front of his mouth. "Monsieur Link, as I'm sure you've gathered, there is something foul afoot in the land of Ghent. Our armed forces move away from the obvious, immediate threat of the trolls and gather on a distant border, languishing. I spoke earlier of oddness behind the Prince as he ordered this, and to understand this mission, you must first understand our suspicions."

"I'm listening." Link said, and the big man nodded. Martin began to explain, and as he spoke, Link realized there was no way he could turn this mission down.

Apparently, around the same time the Prince issued his stone-faced orders to move the army away from the trolls, a number of mysterious things had happened among the royal family. The princess, jewel of the kingdom and loved by all, fell deathly ill, and none were allowed to see her. The Prince's consort, bereaved by her daughter's illness, was cloistered in her room, and spoke to no one. Security around the royal family had become ironclad, and was maintained without interruption by the Prince's Guard, an ultra-elite and exclusive cadre of men who answered directly to the Prince himself. All unnecessary people had been cleared from the castle at the heart of Monseille, and the royal quarters were utterly and without exception off limits, even to the Prince's advisers and to the nobles. A terrible air of tragedy hung over the entire place, but no information went in or out. The Prince and his family had become an enigmatic closed box that no one on the outside had the authority to question. With these hard-to-swallow orders sitting in their laps, Monseille's military elite were most unhappy with the situation, to say the least.

"Okay, I think I see where you're coming from," Link assured the nerve-wracked conspirators who had come to him with their problem. "What I don't understand is what you think _I_ can do. I'm just a simple warrior, not some creeping spy," Link lied, "Just hours ago, they were prepared to turn me away at the city's front gates without even checking my papers. What makes you think I can get into the castle's royal quarters?"

"We have that arranged," the Duke said, cutting off Martin before he could give out details, "but you will hear no more until you agree to the contract. The job is simple information-gathering—we need to know what is happening within the royal family, to know that there is no intrigue behind these insane orders. We know that the Prince's weekly meeting with his personal inner circle is tomorrow, and it is better not to wait."

"_Tomorrow_?" Link nearly jumped out of his seat, not angry so much as shocked. They must have had their plan ready and waiting for an agent to show up, to suggest launching it the day after propositioning him. Then again, this could all be a totally half-assed affair, with Link as the schmuck who got to stick his hand in the vice. "And what if you get me inside—and I'm _caught_?" Link asked, fielding his concern. "Even should I be unwilling to talk, I can't guarantee I wouldn't, if it came to torture."

"First of all, men of Ghent do _not_ stoop to _torture_!" the Duke snapped, incensed that he should even imply such a thing. "But you have nothing to fear there, either way. If you _are_ captured, you have merely to keep your mouth shut until we can arrange for you to be liberated from custody. We control the dungeons as much as we command the city's walls and guard force."

_We_. Link pondered that it was time for a Prince to start worrying when one of his top generals didn't include him in the term, 'we.' He didn't have time to dwell on that though, as the Duke quickly went on with the most elegant part of his plan, the whole reason for involving Link at all.

"Considering the obvious clue of your ears and speech," the Duke half-gloated, "the incident will be explained away as a plot by Hyrule, with your escape evidence of their vile reach. Given the military situation, few would question such an explanation. If you did feel the urge to sing a different story to the Royal Guard, it would fall on deaf ears. Besides, talkative prisoners tend to have 'accidents' in our dungeons—it is a _mysterious_ phenomenon."

Link swallowed the urge to 'ahh' as he finally saw the core of their reasoning in bringing this to him. Link represented an agent they for whom they had absolute deniability. Even if Link _told_ the Prince's men that he was working for the Ghentese, it would look like a Hylian spy was trying to sow distrust among the enemy. By hiring someone who was obviously a foreign national to do their spying, they could elude all suspicion themselves. He particularly liked the way the Duke snuck in that last threat—they were too 'civilized' for torture, but assassination was still fair game, apparently.

Link didn't point out that only a truly stupid Hylian Monarch would send a spy that was obviously from Hyrule to collect information in Ghent, and not only because his very smart princess had done exactly that. She had reasons to choose him that strongly mitigated the disadvantage represented by his obvious nationality. In any case, it would never occur naturally to a Ghentese that a Hylian _wouldn't_ do such a foolish thing—to them, all Hylians, at least in the abstract, _were_ stupid. That innate cultural bias had let him through their borders, and now it was letting him into their nation's most secure heart.

"Well, I suppose this doesn't sound all _that_ bad," Link began cautiously, betraying none of his pleasure at how this was going. "The only real problem I see is—how am I supposed to collect information? Even if I do get inside undetected, I don't speak but ten words of Ghentese. I doubt the Prince and Consort would be so kind as to speak in Hylian for my benefit."

"And yet, that, too, has a solution." The Duke glared at him. Link didn't know about that—but he had to take him at his word. If they did really have a way around needing his direct, verbal report of what he found, it might also explain why they wanted him as their agent. A man who didn't speak Ghentese wouldn't even know the secrets he was gathering, and couldn't blab them or re-sell them if he wanted to. There was always that little problem that you couldn't force people to un-hear inconvenient things without resorting to extreme measures.

"Now," the Duke's patience ended audibly, "we will proceed no further without your sworn oath to this contract. What say you, Monsieur Link? Are you the man for this job?"

Link made a show of thinking about it, but finally smiled.

"I am."

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda woke in a start from a dream of golden triangles a familiar, evil laughter. A slow, crawling vibration tickled between her breasts, and her sleep-muddled mind cleared to razor-sharp awareness in a few seconds, the nagging images of her dream fading just as quickly. She didn't sit up, but drew the quietly humming stone from her nightgown and watched as it soft glow broke the solid black darkness of her thoroughly muffled bedchambers. Zelda felt the mildest thrill of fear, as she'd finished explaining how important it was for Link to save the stone for emergencies only about a week ago. For her life, Zelda would never understand how he managed to encounter emergencies so quickly. The idea that it was a false alarm never crossed her mind.

When there was no voice after a few seconds, Zelda realized that Link was already making use of one of the stone's other features. Lifting the stone a little higher, she rolled on her side and held it over the wide, smooth expanse of her silken mattress. When she had it positioned, she tapped it twice, tolling on the crystal with a fingernail. Immediately, its light flared brighter until it was projecting a soft magenta glow down onto the clear space beneath it.

Etched in that glow were letters, a silent message from Link. At first, the message was an illegible blur, and Zelda whispered near-curses as she varied the height of the stone over the bed until the image came into focus. For a while, she thought she was still doing it wrong, because the best focus she could get still wasn't very legible. Eventually, she realized it was upside down, and that Link's handwriting really stunk.

One of the stone's other features was that, when held correctly and used as a pen to trace letters, the twin of the stone would be able to project those letters as surely as you'd written them wherever the other one happened to be. It was a feature for operating near prying ears, or for when a spoken message was impractical compared to a quickly jotted note. As she recalled all this, Zelda berated herself for complaining about Link's handwriting. He was almost certainly writing under an extreme circumstance, and it wasn't as if the whispering stone left pen marks that would let you keep your rule straight or give you a chance to check your spelling. You were essentially writing on air.

By her best estimation, the message read "Make time tomorrow, live translation Ghentese, Prince secret talks." Zelda didn't question. She could have put every faculty of her mind to the task of figuring out how Link would get within earshot of the Prince's secret talks, and come up with nothing but the wild, speculative theories any imaginative child would have developed. Instead of questioning, she smothered the stone and lay back in bed, developing the bones of a plan for being free tomorrow.

Honestly, there was nothing that needed her attention all that badly—she'd worked hard on every problem she'd been able to find and was now mostly pestering her subordinates on progress that was more dependent on time than on micromanagement. It was beginning to wear on nerves, and the last thing she needed was to have her workers so worried about her that they couldn't get their jobs done. Perhaps it was time she took a step back from affairs of state for a day. A little bit of recreation, genuine relaxation time that she didn't spend parading herself at parties for the benefit of her image and nobles' egos, would be welcome. It would also be excellent cover for her blazing desire to have this promised ear at Prince Philip's door.

Zelda thought about it a little more. There was a very glaring omission from that message that was going to make tomorrow rather nerve-wracking.

"_Link, you jerk_," she thought, as she rolled over to get back to sleep, "_couldn't you even give me a hint what time this was supposed to happen_?"

**Monseille, The Principality of Ghent**

The gaping maw of the tunnel leading into the city's cisterns roared open in front of Monica, the unearthly moaning it made as it vented chilled air forcing her to take a step back. Here in the shadow of the ramparts where the sun didn't reach, away from the bustling part of the city, it was all too easy to believe the stories of ghosts and monsters. The little girl eyed her objective nervously, swallowed hard, and turned around on stiff legs.

"What's the matter, 'Lady Hero?'" a taunting voice called as she looked back on the crowd of her peers that had gathered for the show. The little boy it belonged to stood amid his chuckling gang and orated demeaning taunts as only a ten-year-old can. "Are you too _cuckoo_ to back up those big words of yours? I guess the little baby is too much of a dumb girly-wimp to head down to the underground, just like I said!"

"I'm not a girly-wimp!" Monica's temper flared, and she stamped as her jaw set in defiance. She brandished her 'halberd,' an old broomstick with a bit of scrap wood tied to the end, and marched right at her antagonist with the clear intent to pummel. Bart the Bully had the sense to blanch and look nervous as he remembered, a little too late, that there was a reason they'd pressured her into facing The Underground, rather than simply beating her up and being done with the issue of dominance. The rest of that reason appeared quickly, as Monica's two cousins appeared between her and her intended victim with gave expressions.

"Hold on, Mica," Brenton asked, grabbing her arm when she tried to force by them. "If you want to pummel this jerk, I wouldn't blame you. Bart's an idiot, and he has it coming. Just remember how much trouble we'll get in when he tattles to his parents."

"I don't care," Monica said, pulling her arm out of her cousin's grip. Although they were the same age, he was a little bigger than her, not that it stopped her from whooping him in all sorts of games. Her dominance in the many playful competitions of childhood was a familiar story whenever she came to play with the city kids, and it divided her playmates into a camp who thought she was an invincible, unapproachable terror, and the group that desperately wanted that thinking to change. Fortunately, her cousins could be counted on to be on her side. Unfortunately, she couldn't be counted on to listen when her ire was up.

"Please, Mica?" Robin's softer, higher-pitched voice caught her ear much more effectively, and Monica's fire cooled. She turned and looked at the concerned expression he was giving her, and her desire to beat Bart around the head faded. Robin looked way too much like his mother, and that added the threat of how Aunt Marian would react to her picking fights in the street. She turned away from her antagonists and faced the tunnel again, and her cousins came up to flank her on either shoulder.

"Are any of those stories true?" Monica whispered, discreetly wringing at her skirt. The dress she wore now was quite a bit nicer than the old cotton shifts she used out on the farm. Its blue and black striped patterns and buttons presented a welcome improvement over what had basically been a formless, heavy-duty rag she wore to tend vegetables and run though the grassy countryside. Monica's mom stored it with her other 'nice cloths' here at her aunt's place, along with the white stockings and ill-fitting shoes she now wore. Goodness knows it probably cost them a meal, but Aunt Marian insisted that she couldn't run around bare-foot through the slime that encrusted the city's gutters. For once, mother had agreed with her sister-in-law.

"Oh, I'm not trying to scare you," Brenton said knowledgeably, "but yeah, the cisterns are definitely dangerous. Oh, the ghost stories are just silly kiddy stuff," said the only-four-moths-older boy, "but the water is deep, and everything is slippery with moss and gunk and stuff. Going down there is a _bad_ idea Mica—"

"I'm not gonna cuckoo out—"

"And I already said I wouldn't make you, stupid!" Their aggressive whispering caught the attention of everyone who came to watch her complete the dare, and they quieted down as people closed in to eavesdrop. "I'm just telling you, stay away from the ledges or you're sure to fall in. Once you're in, the current will sweep you away, and the stones are _way_ too slippery to grab on or climb back up. They say that kids have died down there, and that's why the grown-ups say not to come here."

"Oh no," Robin worried openly on Monica's other side as they spoke of parental disapproval and drowning in the cisterns. "Won't you please not go? Please Mica?"

"I've _gotta_ do this Rob," Monica set her jaw. "It's not just for me, but for the Lady Hero, and for Monsieur Link. If I don't, then the things they said… well…" Monica's words were choked off by strong emotion, and they all thought back to earlier in the day. By the long stretch of events they had to cover, it was hard to imagine it was only the afternoon of the day after she'd arrived in town. But then, a child's measure for time was very different.

Monica woke up early, as young children often do when there is nothing but play to look forward to. Although their time in the city was all business to her mom, it was Monica's vacation. She'd started it with a bath, a rare luxury, and one dampened only by the fact that she had to share a little washtub with her mom. Monica considered herself too old to be bathing with her mom still, but there was no time or water for separate baths and she knew better than to cross her mom while they were in town. Something about selling vegetables made her crabby, so much that often the difference between 'hugs and cuddles' and 'stern words' was a single whisper of mouthy back-talk.

After the bath had been the delight of her nice clothes, which were absolutely wonderful, even when tempered by her uncomfortable shoes. A good breakfast of bacon, hash, and flapjacks taken with the rest of the inn's patrons had rounded out the terrific morning, even if she'd been disappointed to miss Monsieur Link, who had left the building early. After that, there was nothing to do but follow her cousins out to meet the town children in the abandoned lot they'd claimed as playground. That was when things had gotten interesting.

As usual, she'd joined the boys' game of Knights and Trolls rather than the girls playing House, and had gotten the usual guff about it. Bart and his type never had a problem when she was younger and consented to being the Damsel in Distress, but for two years running now, she'd insisted on being the Lady Hero.

A certain type of chauvinism was taught to Ghentese lads from the cradle, and that mindset couldn't reconcile a girl in a battle of even the pretend variety. Their objections were loud and insistent, eventually becoming derisive and condescending. Monica had little patience for it. Last summer it had come to a fight, and Monica had shocked them all into respect with her quick moves and demonstrated lack of hesitation to 'hit for real.'

None of them had any reason to suspect that her daddy had taught her all about what places hurt boys when you kicked them, especially since he'd included far more than the obvious 'classics' in the lesson. Things had gotten heated, and she'd broken Boden's nose and dislocated Lance's ring finger. Bart had taken a shot in the 'vulnerables' as her father called them, and they'd learned better than to challenge her with direct violence quickly enough. She'd gotten a black eye and several huge, purple bruises for her trouble, but she'd been standing where the others were whimpering on the ground, and that was what mattered. When the pure shock dissipated, no one argued with her about playing a Knight in their games, but then again, the play had been pretty strained for the rest of her visit.

She'd half expected the cold reception those events had earned her, but the reality of it had been much harder to deal with. When she refused to back off from a mere silent treatment, Bart had orchestrated a battery of verbal abuse. Shielded by the reality of what her mother would do to her if she fought in anything but self defense, the gang had insulted her, her family, and especially their relative poverty. When none of that managed to crack her steely reserve, they'd picked up on a different track.

First they started to deride the legends of the Lady Hero, long 'known' to be mere folk-tales of a person who had never been, taunting her for her vane hope and plucking at her softest nerve: the fact that she would never be allowed to follow her father's path into the army as her cousins would follow theirs. Just when she couldn't take anymore of that, they'd taken up against the stories she'd proudly boasted to anyone who'd listen all morning, the story of her encounter with trolls and the man who'd rescued her. It took them a bit to realize taunting her about being 'in love' with Link wouldn't work on a girl facing puberty earlier than most, but they straightened themselves out quickly enough. When they started calling Link a foreign dog who conspired with her mother to cuckold her father, whatever _that_ meant, Monica had totally lost it.

Intervention by Brenton and Robin had saved the boys from further injury, and perhaps saved Monica from their retaliation on top of the beating her mother would rightly met out for her starting a fight. What they hadn't been able to corral was her mouth, which had gone off like one of the exploding noisemakers people imported from Hyrule. She'd given back as good as she got, defending her family, Link, and the Lady Hero until she'd shouted herself hoarse. And when she'd finished, the boys were grinning at her. They had a challenge for her, a dare, and after all that yelling, to back down on this unrelated point was to admit defeat on all fronts.

That brought them back to now. Deep in the damp, dark innards of the city's ancient stone construction was the cistern, a system of tunnels and basins that collected rain and channeled underground springs to feed the city's wells. Delving down into this dangerous, utterly spooky place had been a rite of passage for Monseille's youths for generations without end, directly in defiance of, or perhaps even because of, the taboo against it placed by adults. It had claimed lives, but the fact that some who entered never returned simply increased the enchanting hold it had on their imaginations.

"Okay," Brenton shook his head in reluctant acceptance, thoroughly unhappy. He was the oldest, and he should be watching out for his cousin, he should be responsible. "I can't stop you, but you're going to do this right. Robin, go get my lamp. Quickly." Robin nodded and ran off, and Monica watched him go before turning a stubborn look on her older cousin.

"I don't need your help," Monica said. Brenton nodded, as totally unwavering as his opponent. "I'm going to do this on my own and shut those stupid jerks up."

"I understand. Now, you memorized the directions I gave you, right?" Brenton asked, and Monica nodded past a scowl. The objective of any youth entering the cisterns was to find a way through the twisting mess of cold, thundering waterways and reach the mark-post. The post was painted with gold leaf, and marked the center of the south wall, the traditional 'front' of Monseille. It was a monument forgotten by time, its gold leaf peeling away with the ages, and it was this shining remnant that she would seek.

To come back with a sliver of gold from the mark-post was a badge of victory for a child in Monseille. Brenton had his, and he was more than willing to cheat and let Monica pass it off as her own, but she'd rejected that solution immediately. Even when he'd explained that the sliver Bart touted was inherited from the boy's older brother, Monica had refused to cheat on the test. If Brenton could do it, so could she, and she'd not lower herself to Bart's level by emulating his cheap tactics.

Robin got back with the lamp, gasping from the long run, and the cousins could no longer justify any delay. With trepidation she would never allow herself to show, Monica took her 'halberd' in one hand and her lamp in the other, facing the squared maw of the cistern's access tunnel. She nodded to the boys at the entrance, and they peeled back the linked chains that were supposed to keep young people from doing just this, ushering her through the gap. It took every bit of her nerve to not look back as she stepped up into the shadows on the far side, and she paused for but a moment as she pumped the lamp's sparking switch and lit the darkness. In a handful of steps, she was out of sight of the others.

Brenton sat against the towering city wall and hunkered down to wait. Everyone else stuck around at first, not wanting to miss 'Lady Zero' when she chickened out and came crawling back. When that didn't happen, Bart cajoled one of his cronies into heading down and peeking in to see if her lamp was in sight, believing her to be hanging out just inside the entrance (a tactic he'd used to great effect when he'd faked his own attempt). He came scurrying back in a pale rush, having seen nothing in the moaning blackness of the cistern.

Brenton tried not to look too smug as Bart started to sweat. His little Mica wouldn't have any trouble with this, and that jerk was about to eat a heaping plate of steaming-hot crow.

Navigating the cistern's slippery stone waterways turned out to be pretty damn terrifying, or so Monica decided, as the last rays of sunlight died away behind her. From the outside, it literally seemed like a black pit in which any kind of beast might lurk, ready to reach out with gnarled claws to drag her into nightmares. But of course, all of that was supposed to just be her imagination inventing terror, and should have gone away when she walked in and found nothing to fear. Indeed, from the inside, it was little more than a chilly, damp, tunnel that smelled of moss and wet stone.

Of course, it didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to. Within thirty seconds, there wasn't a shred of light other than her lamp, and the hard blackness beyond its flame was mercilessly solid. There might be anything out in the dark, even though her lamp showed only stone and grime, and her imagination populated it with terrors even more quickly than it had from outside.

After about a minute of walking, there was the prominent sound of running water and endless echoes. The lamp light ran out of walls to either side and just barely reached out to a far wall some ten feet away, where Monica's eyes focused as she came out of the access tunnel and into the first spillway. The sound of moving water was virtually on top of her now, and she advanced toward the far wall, eyes darting around in low-key panic, searching for motion in the shadows.

Suddenly, her foot missed its next step, plunged to the ankle in icy water, and only a tottering, reflexive backward leap saved her from stepping face-first into the cistern. It all happened so fast, she forgot to shriek in surprise, and she fumbled dumbly to hold up her lamp as she pulled her sodden stocking out of the water. As she stood up, her only thought was of what luck she'd had to not lose her shoe and earn parental wrath, her mind not accepting how close she'd come to plunging into the current and almost certain death.

As she stepped up and looked around in the larger space, a narrow, man made, underground river crowded in next to her, rushing by with quite a current and a constant, low-key noise. There was only an inch between the lip of the floor and the water, and although the water plowed by with force, there was hardly a ripple on the surface to give it away under the dim lamplight. The damp, shiny blue-black of the stones matched the surface of the water so well that she hadn't even noticed the difference until she'd stepped into it.

Monica rechecked her footing immediately, and waved her lamp around until she could make out the narrow walkway of crumbling stones leading off along either wall. Indeed, the two-foot wide ledge hardly deserved the term walkway: it was so damp and eroded that it was obvious it spent a great deal of time submerged, probably when a good rain upped the cistern's water level. That thought sent Monica's eyes upwards, and she could see the regular indents where the city wall's gutters emptied out. These were also the source of the chilling wind, which moaned around her and would have sent any flame but a closed lamp like hers sputtering and flickering.

After spending a little time fighting off the almost painful claustrophobia of the choking darkness, where creatures without form, but with universally huge and deadly claws waited for her, Monica forced her whimpering down and concentrated on what Brenton had told her. First, it was left. And so on…

Twenty minutes later, Monica was thoroughly sick of dank, windy tunnels. On the other hand, her fear of the all-around dark had been fully supplanted with her frayed nerves and the burning in her thighs. Down in this pit, every step was another toss of the dice, and even odds got you poor footing or a crumbling brick. The ledge she was walking on, along with all the walls and the cistern that they were in complex with, had been built hundreds of years ago. Centuries of erosion with minimal efforts at repair had turned a serviceable, if recklessly narrow walkway into an undisguised deathtrap. With a grand total of two feet of path-width to work with in the first place, every bit of damage was a nightmare.

It hadn't been so bad back near the access tunnel, but now that she was deep into the waterway, the path became ever more eroded under her feet. Bricks cut from the solid rock of the Death Mountain range had been smoothed over the ages by running water, sediment from the streaming cistern caking on in a purely natural way. Now, places along the walkway were as rounded as the rocks of a riverbed, their creases filled to ceramic smoothness by infantile calcium deposits that might someday be dappled stalagmite formations.

To step on such an eroded stone was to encounter zero friction, nearly as bad as black ice, and avoiding the short slip into a chill, tumbling death in the cistern flow was incredibly tiring. It was so bad that, although the trip to the marker only involved two forks and about half mile of tunnel, she was only just now getting close, as far as she could tell. Of course, for all that she really knew, she was utterly lost, and would be doomed to shouting up the gutter-pipes until someone up on the city walls heard her. More than one kid to make the attempt had met that ignoble doom, and it was not the kind of attention Monica wanted to get.

The young girl was so focused on where she was putting her feet that she forgot to pay attention to where she was going. So it was that the top of her lowered head cracked dead-on into a metal bar thrusting from the wall about waist-height to a man. There was a thunderous clang and a spear of agony through her head as she staggered back and landed on her bum, and she dropped her halberd clattering to the stones to hold a hand against the lump flashing hot pain through her skull. She coughed and moaned at the pain for a few minutes, fighting off tears, and finally took her little lamp in hand and looked up at the offending bar. When she was met with a sparkle of brilliant gold, she nearly dropped her lantern in surprise.

In her mind, Monica had imagined the marker post to be a sort of signpost, almost like a gaudier version of the ones that pointed out street names or proclaimed the names of certain town shops. In essence, it was something that came up from the ground and stopped at some uncertain height. The sparkling protrusion from the wall was about two inches thick and spanned the full ten feet of the cistern tunnel, almost like a very low coat rack or the climbing bar the town council had donated to the empty lot where the city children played. Of course, she only had to look around to know she'd found what she was looking for.

The space around the marker post showed the influence it had wrought on the youth of Monseille. The bar itself was old and deteriorating, its gold foil flaking and peeling and missing in a furious, patchy manner that started near the wall and became less complete as it reached out over the water. When it spanned past easy reach of a young arm, it was almost complete again, though it still peeled. On the wall near the bar, the signatures and scrawled comments of innumerable people decorated the pitted, crumbling stone. There were too many to count, and the dark made most of them illegible, even if time and damp air hadn't all but erased them already. Encountering the destination of her short pilgrimage was an almost magical sensation, and Monica hurried to make good on her victory.

Monica had just finished carving her initials and age into an empty bit of stone with a handy rock-chip when she heard the first odd noise. It was almost imperceptible, what with the trickle of water and the moan of wind thundering in acoustically-enhanced echoes all around her. Of course, it only became louder, and as she came to fully perceive it, she also recognized what it must be. The irregular, staccato clash of metal overlain with harsh grunts and shouts was hardly difficult to place—it was a sound of battle.

As the noise became more and more distinct, Monica's hair fought to stand on end and her pulse began to beat painfully in her palms, temples, and against her throat. There was no light but hers, no motion or sense of motion out in the darkness to either side, and yet the noise only got closer with every second. Frozen in abject terror, Monica collapsed to her knees and clutched at her own arms, digging in her fingernails until blood sprouted. It wasn't simply eerie—oh no. Tree branches against the window during a thunderstorm were eerie. The sound of footsteps in an abandoned house was eerie. The sound of a frightfully active, furiously quick battle emanating from the thin air itself struck the little girl through with the desire to scream and flee.

Suddenly the clash of steel seemed to be right on top of her, and she picked up her lamp and turned to run back the way she'd come just in time to be rocked from her feet as the whole tunnel bucked under her. The world jerked violently once, then vibrated, and she turned around in a daze from her sprawl and saw a strong light burning into the tunnel from a side-path that had previously been blank wall. The thunder of battle trumpeted from that opening, the light and shadows wavering with lunatic speed. As she witnessed what seemed to be a portal to hell opening up before her, she was finally too thoroughly shocked to feel afraid.

There was shout, a grunt, and a sickening, wet, _crack_, and a bigger-than-human man-shape issued from the gap like a slingshot bullet and sailed gracelessly to the far wall. It impacted and rebounded into the cistern with a thunderous _sploosh_, and the murderous current swept it away into the dark before she could get half a look at it. She hadn't time to wonder, either, because the mysterious new portal disgorged yet more people-shapes the next moment, no less than three big forms locked in furious melee.

The three pivoted and twirled in and out of visibility at the tunnel's mouth, and then there was a scream of pain as the smaller one, who carried a lamp tied at his hip, was knocked back and landed with his head dipped over the deadly stream, two great bodies bearing down on him. At this point, Monica recognized a man pinned by two trolls, even with their bodies mostly obscured by the tunnel they poked out of, and her heart seized as she identified her people's mortal enemies.

At the moment, one troll had its curving blade clutched in both hands, bearing down with all its weight onto the man, whose straight broadsword was like a barbell in his hands, one hand on hilt and one hand on blade as he blocked and pushed back. Even as he struggled with that one, the other troll leaned against him on its short spear, the point bearing down into the man's shield where it had become jammed. He was trapped, one troll hacking down onto his guard and the other working desperately to drive its spear the rest of the way through his shield and into his vitals. The three were locked in deadly stalemate, but the man was at a terrible disadvantage, and Monica was frozen in terrified awe.

The squirming, jerking wrestling match shifted violently as the troll with the sword went into a flurry of bashing strikes, the clangor of steel on steel echoing terribly in the tunnel and the flash of sparks adding a new kind of light to the shadows. Each downward strike drove the man's desperate guard back an inch, until one last strike nearly sent the scimitar cleaving into his shadowed head. He actually dipped his head into the cistern waters to dodge the strike, and the troll screamed in rage as it was robbed of victory. It reared further than ever to slash down at its victim with a killing blow, but misbalanced in its fury. The next strike was clumsy, and the pinned man parried it along his blade at a slant and let the troll's own overextended momentum slide around his body and tumble headlong into the cistern. The gurgling scream that swept by Monica chilled her heart, and she saw long troll arms flail wildly for a grip on the walkway's slippery ledge—a grip that the bedraggled creature could never hope to find.

With that troll dispatched, its brother redoubled its efforts on the distracted human warrior, and there was a screech of protest as metal gave way. A shout of feral joy and mortal agony intertwined in the darkness, the spear driving home and piercing armor and flesh. The exultant troll sought purchase to drive the spear to a final home in his intestines, but in its haste, it stepped to footing no longer protected by the troll pinning the man directly. The warrior lashed out somewhere beyond Monica's view, tripping the troll forward onto his waiting blade and spitting it through the heart, only his steely grip on the shield keeping the spear from twisting in the wound as it fell. Its death rattle was quick and bone-chilling, and when it ended, there was naught but the ambient noise of water, wind, and the agonized breaths of the warrior as he shifted the huge troll away and struggled for air.

With terribly deliberate motions, the man unlashed his shield and pried the spear out of his gut. The armor had kept it from penetrating deeply, but it was still a terrible stab wound to a vulnerable area, and Monica was amazed to see him crawl slowly to his feet. The lamp on his hip, which had kept him backlit as it tumbled on the other side of him from Monica, now cast a glow over his pain-drawn features.

"Monseiur Link?" Monica asked in plain astonishment. But, there was no question, it could be no other. His eyes considered her without comprehending for long seconds as his battle rush slowly drained, but he finally blinked away that red fog.

"Monica?" He asked, clearly as confused as she was. And then his precarious resistance to the piercing agony gave way, and he slumped against the wall and tumbled down into a sprawl. His wide body occupied the entire walkway, and Monica rushed forward to lean down and check on him. The idea of him dying wasn't one her mind could really process.

He was not dead, far from it, and Monica's heart started beating again as he rolled over in her shadow and looked up at her with pain-fogged vision. A quick check by the light of his much brighter lantern showed three other minor gashes along his arms and a deep cut along his thigh, but by far the blood ran most freely from the seeping gash in his stomach. Monica's paltry knowledge of wounds demanded she get him out of the armor and wrap a bandage around him immediately, but he batted away her fumbling, shock-numbed hands. She recoiled from the rejection, and settled for kneeling a short distance away as he proceeded to treat himself.

His first move was to reach into his extensive complement of belt pouches until he located a flask holder. He unbuttoned the padded flap and revealed a row of thick crystal bottles in individual sleeves, each one filled with a different color of liquid. By touch alone, he chose one and retrieved it, and the vibrant red liquid inside seemed to almost glow. Red medicine… _awesome_.

Link quickly bit down on the stopper and pulled it out, slipped his hand off the bleeding wound, and poured in a dollop of the magic healing potion. As the bloodied flesh began to glow, he tossed back the rest of the bottle in one gulp, and gritted his teeth as it took immediate effect. There was a strain through his body as it was energized by the enchanted fluid, and then he slumped in relaxation and sighed. The stomach wound was a terrible black bruise and the various gashes were still tender pink scars, but he was no longer losing blood.

That distraction settled, Link looked up at Monica and cocked a confused expression her way. She returned an almost mirrored expression, and scooted back from him as he sat up on the too-narrow walkway and turned around to consider her, favoring his still-wounded abs. He said something or other in Hylian, and while it sounded contemplative, it might as well have been baby babble for all she understood him. The pure shock of the whole episode still hadn't quite worn off, and it wouldn't have a chance to. Link's next clumsy attempt at resolving the awkward air of the unimaginable situation was interrupted by a sound of shouting in a harsh tongue echoing down the newly revealed cross-hallway. The voices were inhuman and angry, and Link was up on his feet and running before Monica could even comprehend the approaching danger.

With another arm into that cloak of his, Link produced a hefty black sphere with a bit of string sticking out. He clipped his free gauntlet fiercely against the one holding the ball, and the sparks he cast lit the fuse as he covered the few steps to the other hall. A new light source was moving up out of it, but he didn't even look around the corner before he pitched the hissing metal ball that way. Monica was wondering just what he was up to until the ground bucked under her again, setting her to clutching at the sheer wall in vain as the world vibrated for several long seconds. A gout of dust choked off the lamplight, and when it cleared, the tunnel was blocked again.

Link stepped back, waving the dust away from his face as he turned toward Monica again. The little girl sat and watched him, trying to figure out what in the world could possibly just have happened. An idle hand reached out to grab at her long-ago-discarded broomstick halberd, and she used it to push herself to her feet on the slippery stones. Link was smiling at her, and he opened his mouth to make another attempt at communicating. That was when the stones shattered under his feet and slipped diagonally into the cistern, Link following in a blur.

Monica screamed as he fell, the instant seeming to stretch out in slow motion. His look of shock hadn't even fully formed on his face by the time his body followed his long-gone footing, and a heartbeat later, he was gone. The deep water sucked him in and swallowed him without a trace.

As a credit to her reckless bravery, Monica didn't even blink before she slapped her halberd out into the impenetrable dark left behind as Link's lantern was snuffed. The old stick of wood smacked into the water surface and kicked up a wake as she held it still, and a single heartbeat after Link went in, his flailing hand came up. The fingers skittered across the wooden pole for an instant, and then caught at the very far tip. As a credit to Monica's complete lack of forethought, the weight of all that water pulling on Link's huge frame plucked her of her feet and sent her tumbling through the air toward the water. Her arms pin wheeled to control the fall, to grab some purchase, and by blind luck, they both slapped into a handhold. Hard-wired reflex forced her hands to grip down, and as her feet hit the water, the pull of the current on her ankles and her own weight jerked against her hold.

Adrenaline made her tighten like a spring as she struggled against the pull of the current at her feet. Her eyes searched madly in the dim light cast by her small, forgotten lamp, and she realized she was hanging from the degraded golden span of the mark post. The cistern walkway was about four feet to her right, and to her left was darkness. Darkness unbroken except for the length of her toy halberd jutting from the water as it's 'axe blade' hooked it onto the post next to her. Monica's eyes went saucer wide.

With a huge sound of moving water, an enormous wake formed in the stream and exploded out into the bedraggled shape of Link, coughing desperately for air. He dangled on the end of the broomstick for a moment, and was climbing up it hand over hand against the current, water blasting up around him in a huge spray. The pitiful strips of twine holding the child-made toy together began to stretch and snap in seconds, and it exploded into splinters, even as he threw himself forward and snatched at the marker post, taking up a grip next to Monica. It was a work of moments for him to hand-over-hand back to the walkway, and he barely had to pause to flip her onto his back and carry her with him. She clung to him for dear life, and when the two of them were on dry ground again, she completely failed to let go.

Link, for his part, did not try to disturb her. He just shook out his soaking armor, guided her feet to convenient holds on his equipment harness, and left her to cling around his neck. She burned with embarrassment to behave so childishly, but she honestly didn't want to let go. After all the warnings from Brenton, she honestly realized how close she'd come to death this time, even if she'd only managed to in her effort to help Link. Somehow, that made it all more real, even if she hadn't a clue what had crossed her path with his. It was all like some kind of wonderful, terrible dream that had begun the moment she stepped into the darkness.

She waited, barely paying attention, as Link collected his shield and her lamp. He used hers to re-light his own lamp, then hung her little lamp on his belt and led the way with his. The journey out was uneventful, now that pursuit was cut off and Link knew to watch his footing. There was an awkward pause at the first fork, but Monica simply pointed the way, and Link followed her direction without questions or hesitation. In less than half the time it took her to get in, she rode Link out into the sunlight.

**Original Note:**

Forgive the narrative leap, all questions of what went on during Link's infiltration of the castle and what he learned will be resolved next chapter, told through flashbacks. This is an experiment in suspense-building story structure. I think it'll be pretty good.

Military rank in this fictional medieval society has very little relation to anything familiar. 'Sergeant' is a title for any and all of the common-born soldiers who work in command positions under the nobility. On the other hand, it is also an informal honorific for any veteran soldier, so it might get a little confusing. The intrigue in future chapters is going to have a rising dependence on understanding rank, so I'll go over the system I half-fabricated for the story.

To become a sergeant, the standard track is to train under a current sergeant from a young age, just like anyone trying to learn a professional skill in a pre-print, pre-industrial society. After your education, your commission and any rank you achieve will come entirely at the discretion of the nobility. This distinguishes it from non-commissioned rank, which any man capable of bearing arms can receive, merely by showing initiative and talent within eyeshot of a Sergeant. It is possible to show ability enough to be commissioned without serving an official apprenticeship, but it would take serious sponsorship. Nobles don't usually bother with soldiers far below them on the totem pole.

While the system ensures a steady crop of highly-trained mid-ranking commanders, it is not without its flaws. One of these is that, any noble of any title, once he's turned 18, can issue legal orders to any Sergeant, no matter the man's rank. This means that even a mere Baron (relative rank: Major—and this he gets because he has a title and a pulse) can give him legal orders in many situations, even though he's not personally allowed to command as many men as the highest ranking Sergeants.

Martin is a 'Sergeant Commander' which is roughly the equivalent of a Colonel by today's standards, and is the highest rank you can achieve without being born with a coat of arms. This may seem like a prodigious rank for his age, but Ghent is a society in constant low-level warfare, and there are many more opportunities for advancement. Manuel, only three years younger, is a mere Sergeant Lieutenant, one step up from Sergeant Apprentice, a rank traditionally held by boys ages 13 to 17.

**Second Full Revision Note:**

One of my more interested readers requested clarification on how the military ranks I wrote worked (back when the chapter was current). Thus that long note. I feel this chapter represents some of my best writing in the story so far, which makes it rather interesting that a big section of it virtually ignores the canon characters of the fiction source material. That is a cardinal sin of fanfiction, but its one I come back to again and again. It's a major problem with my fanfiction. Frankly, the story wouldn't have suffered at all if I had skipped the entire Monica intro and proceeded directly to Link's story with only the barest explanation of why she was in the sewer. Or hell, she's only a transitory secondary character, there was no real need to involve her at all. So why did I put her and her family into the story? Other than a convenient vehicle for moving the plot forward (and then slowing it down), there wasn't a good one. In essence, I was testing my ability to write the actions and behavior of children. Over the course of this story, more than a few plot decisions were governed less by what the very best, most concise way to convey the narrative might be and more by whatever writing flavor of the month I felt like trying out. But hell, it still turned out pretty good, right?


	7. Cloak and Dagger

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 7: Cloak & Dagger**

**Monseille, The Principality of Ghent**

"Damn, if I'd known I'd be infiltrating a fortress this morning, I would have hit the sack early," Link complained sarcastically as he followed easy on the heels of his military contact for this mission, none other than Corporal Terrence, the 'charming' soldier who'd ushered him through the gates some eight hours ago. They were making their way through the lamp-lit, almost abandoned streets, the keep of Monseille rising up into the night sky ahead of them.

"Do shut up, Hylian," the soldier groaned at him, obviously unhappy to have been wakened at this ungodly hour after an all-day shift. Link, who'd covered several dozen miles the previous morning, fought a battle, and then drunk his way through enough beer for two men, couldn't feel too much pity for his situation. It's not like he was about to risk _his_ neck in any but the most circumspect way. "You should practice not talking now, in any case. If others overhear a single word of Hylian out of you, your cover will not survive."

"Huh," Link grunted his understanding. The idea was to pass him off as a soldier transferring into the castle's regular guard force. To that end, most of his gear currently occupied the canvas sack over his shoulder, with his ratty traveler's clothes replaced by ratty Ghent-made cotton britches and shirt. His left eye and most of his head, including his tell-tale ears, were wrapped in a dramatic bandage. The corporal was going to see him into the fortress, wherein the second phase of the plan would take effect.

At length, the two men came to one of the inner gatehouses that separated the keep's courtyard from the city proper. Link kept an exhausted, vacant expression on his face as the corporal, wearing his full armor uniform, rang the bell for the night guard with an accompanying haranguing shout. Eventually, a very haggard, quite drunk looking fellow showed up to beg for silence.

There was a short argument that quickly became a dressing-down as Terrence found the man shirking on his duty. Within minutes, the poor fellow was so terrified of disciplinary action that he never even really looked at Link as he opened the portcullis door and let them through the keep's first line of security.

At this ungodly hour, the courtyard was abandoned and densely shadowed. Link followed the corporal across to a wide door that opened into one of the keep's several barracks. Link and his guide stalked through a darkened exercise space, doors on all sides muffling the sound of sleeping men, and here they stopped for a moment. Terrence pointed to some storage crates that had recently been cracked open, and Link nodded.

The training armor and sparring helm did not fit well at all, but it gave him the profile of a Ghentese soldier, and in the lighting most of this place would have, that would be a free pass from any observing eyes between here and the royal section. It would not stand up to close scrutiny, however, and it was hardly the last stage of this mission.

Disguise donned, Link shouldered his gear again and followed his partner in subversion, eventually reaching the doors that connected to the keep proper. Terrence opened the door with a key from the ring on his belt and ushered him inside. A few long, barely-lit halls later, they found a spiral stairway that took them a long, long way up. The next door they went through took them to the ramparts of the inner curtain wall.

Up on the wall, a hot wind blew off the nighttime plains, across the city rooftops, and beat against flags barely lit by the moonlight. A few puffy-eyed night sentries gave them one look, but not a second after they spotted the Corporal's stripe. So what if they weren't the scheduled patrol? Monseille hadn't been attacked in this generation, and all the action was on the outer wall anyway. There had been hot competition to keep watch over the countryside now that Trolls had been spotted again, and the regular servicemen who were left for inner wall duty were hardly the creme of the crop.

Walking along the inner wall to where it merged into the main keep, the pair met their one and only true obstacle to the Duke's carefully considered plan: the Prince's Guard. Though at this section of the plan, Link hadn't actually seen one of these elite soldiers, and, goddesses willing, wouldn't see them for a while, he knew that they could be distinguished by the blue silk sashes they wore over one shoulder. Even at this hour, they'd never pass a blue-sash checkpoint without being challenged and grilled, and Link's disguise wouldn't survive any kind of examination. That was where the next deception came to bear.

The ramparts kinked to the left along their avenue of approach one last time before they merged into the keep, the walkway along the top of the wall section dead-ending into a set of heavy double doors and a blue-sash checkpoint. The area near the doors was well-lit and the sentries, seen from a distance, looked alert and aware under the lamplight. Beyond the double doors was the royal section of the keep, more blue-sash guards, and the prepared safe point Link needed to get to.

As a set up for the plan, the conspirators had loitered in the stairwell until the regular-service guard who patrolled this section of wall had started his route toward the keep. In the most casual manner they could present, they followed the bored, sleepy man at a safe distance, waiting until he was just far enough from the checkpoint for their plan to have a chance. It was right were the curvature of the wall would no longer hide approaching men from the door sentries, the last bit of cover they had for their illicit scheme.

At the opportune moment, Terrence dashed forward caught the man's attention with a word and a tap on the shoulder. This gave Link all the room he needed to slip in behind, flip the poor sod's helmet forward and acquaint the back of his head with a length of led pipe wrapped in leather. The back-alley weapon, propelled by Link's trained hand, knocked him clean cold in one sweep, while the leather kept it from breaking his skin. The man collapsed into the Corporal's arms with no messy blood to evidence that he'd been attacked.

The next part was the riskiest, and could make or break the infiltration. Link tied his equipment sack around his chest, jumped up onto the ramparts, and got into a nook to hide. Terrence set their patsy down in a distressed pose and rushed over to get 'help' from the blue-sash guards. Link heard the distant sound of excited talking, and watched as Terrence came back… with only one of the guards.

Cursing silently, Link went ahead anyway, leaping over the edge and hanging down over the outside face of the wall. With great, sweeping lunges, Link threw himself from one 'tooth' in the rampart to the next, edging along the wall by his fingers alone. The Duke had provided equipment, climbing claws and safety cords, that would have allowed any fool with guts and muscle to do as much, but Link had forgone them for pure haste. He needed to put some space between himself and the distracted guards before he could come back up on the wall.

The effort of moving along his precarious route consumed his world, but no so much that he didn't notice when luck favored him again. The shouting and distress of the corporal and the guard he'd initially drawn got the other one away from the door too, and all three men began the process of debriefing the guard they'd set up. With all of them around the curve of the wall, Link was free to leap back up onto the rampart and sprint for the doors. He covered the ground in seconds and slowed himself to a discreet stop as he came up against them.

As he'd been promised, they were locked. A key, obtained through some ungodly intrigue by the Duke, saw Link into the most secure heart of an entire city-state. He locked the door behind himself and turned around to face the last leg of the inward infiltration.

The Prince's quarters were a gorgeous site to behold, far and away a different world from the prim, utilitarian façade of the keep's outer faces. Every wall was hung with tapestries and the floor was coated in carpeting, all to hide the cold rock of the fortification. Statues and paintings covered the portions of the windowless hallways that hangings could not, and the end effect was one of opulence strained by the damp chill of an essentially military building. As a final nod towards civility, the high ceilings had been paneled off with fine wood, preventing the inevitable dripping of condensation that bare stone would present.

At this point, Link was practically home free, at least as far as getting in was concerned. The guards, as a bow to the Prince's comfort, concentrated their efforts on keeping people out of the royal quarters, and not so much on having patrols of armored men stomp around them at all hours. Still, Link pulled a length of blue cloth from his bag and tied it over his shoulder to accent his disguise. The last thing he needed was for some insomniac servant take more than one look at him. It was not unheard of for the occasional blue-sash to cut through the royal quarter to reach one of the checkpoints.

Link made his way through the building along the route he'd been advised of. The entire keep was basically a huge cylinder with hallways on the outside and rooms on the inside, and so there weren't really any turns to keep track of anyway. He made it to the correct door without incident, and stepped into the pitch darkness. He got out his lamp and lit it, and found himself in a servant's supply room, the walls faced with shelves and shelves of equipment that the workers used to keep this place looking and smelling like a monarch's residence.

With its usefulness at an end, Link removed his disguise, including the bandage, stripping down and replacing it with his own armor. This was quite against advisement, considering what the next phase involved, but he'd be damned if he'd go unequipped beyond this point. Any further encounter with the guards could only lead to conflict, and he had to be prepared.

Looking like his old vagabond self again, Link stowed his disguise in the bag he'd just emptied, then turned his eyes to the ceiling. This next part relied on a preparation the Duke had made quite a while back, and which, among other things, made Link question the man's motive to an extreme degree. In moments, he found the marker he'd been told to look for, and eyed up the shelf beneath it. A quick climb later, Link pushed on a wooden ceiling panel, and found that it caved upward at his touch. With a bit of acrobatics, he swung himself up and into the alcove it revealed, and now he was above the royal quarter's third floor ceiling, the fourth level's stone floor a good two and a half feet above the wooden paneling he now lay on.

It was a tight space, and the paneling wasn't exactly sturdy, but now a discreet man could move utterly undetected, which was exactly the idea. Only by the grace of the building's renovated design would this work at all—when they'd installed the wood panel ceiling, they'd also knocked out many stone walls and replaced them with wooden dividers that didn't pass from the panels to the true, stone ceiling. This left a gap that could be exploited. To get above the Prince's meeting room, Link would have to navigate a maze of cobwebs, cockroaches, rat droppings, and the metal bars that hung down from the stone and kept the panels' frames in place. He'd also be threading between the few load-bearing stone walls that kept the keep standing now that so many had been removed.

The long crawl was uneventful, although it took some time for Link to get used to placing his weight on the metal panel frames only. One misplaced knee would send his whole leg through someone's ceiling, and that was the opposite of discreet. He was also glad it was such an ungodly hour, because he had little doubt he was making enough thumping and sliding noises to be noticed. At length, though, he came to about where he thought he should be, and when he slid aside a panel by a slight crack, he confirmed what he'd been told he would see in the meeting room. Technically, now he had nothing to do but wait for the meeting.

Link had other ideas.

Something had been nagging at Link since this ultimately perplexing scheme at first been presented to him. What in the world was the big idea behind all of this? If the Duke truly wanted nothing but information, his long-made preparations seemed rather extreme. Why use a 'foolproof' spying mission with all this risk of capture and dramatic sneaking to get something a simple bribe would usually manage? Certainly the Prince's guard, or hell, the serving staff itself couldn't be _that_ loyal. What's more, despite his justifications, his reliance on a 'foreign mercenary' also seemed incredibly odd. Why not hire an actual, trained spy to do your spying? Handing a prepared plan to someone he thought was an amateur struck Link as a unforgivably stupid move—and the Duke never struck him for a moment as a stupid man. It all came together to leave Link with little in the way of trust for the man's avowed purpose.

So it was that the 'dumb Hylian mercenary' that the Duke thought he'd hired used a little something the man hadn't expected when he'd made the down payment—imaginative initiative. Sliding the ceiling panel aside the rest of the way, Link lowered himself gently onto the meeting table in the center of the room below. He slid the panel back into place and made his way to the floor, careful to clean up his dust as he moved.

A quick examination of the room revealed a huge, windowed door leading out to a balcony, and Link didn't hesitate to take a closer look. The balcony opened out into a courtyard, and it was then that Link discovered that the Monseille Keep was actually hollow. It actually made sense, once he got over his initial shock.

Although it had not always been as decorated as it now was, this keep had been built for the specific purpose of housing the royal family. To that end, certain creature comforts were added that would never have made it into traditional fortifications. Specifically, the place had been built like a tube, an opening left down the middle so that each and every room on all floors could have great, big, sunlight-admitting windows without compromising the outer face of the keep, which had to deflect artillery. Over the years, the open space had been accentuated, and now Link found the perfect alternative to the Duke's tailored plan for eavesdropping.

All around, Link could see other balconies of other rooms looking into the circular courtyard from multiple floors. Because it was such a common view, it had been beautified in a number of convenient ways. Fist off, hanging gardens had been built in tiered rings around the wall, metal grating holding up flowers and even bushes in bright, floral glory. That grating had to be strong enough to hold gardeners, and so it would hold Link as well. What was more, however, every vertical surface of the inner wall was absolutely coated in thick, durable ivy. Link saw the ivy, and his brain said _ladder_.

Almost giddy with pleasure at this development, Link hopped right over the balcony ledge and landed hard on the garden tier below. A little bit of creative flower arranging granted him an alcove that was invisible to observers from other balconies, even though the sickly nature of many plants told him that the gardeners had been part of the staff they'd shut out when security had tightened.

_Now_, all he had to do was wait. The Duke had given him a timeframe between about ten and two for when the meeting was supposed to take place. A circumspect glance over the balcony railing above him would tell him if anyone had settled in there. Heck, with the flimsy frame of that balcony door, he'd probably be able to hear even conversational voices. Perfect.

Link settled down to wait as the sky brightened overhead, and passed the time by etching out another message to Zelda on the air in front of him.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda sat at the breakfast table and chose another of the assorted pastries that had been brought up according to her regular schedule. By her own directive, her day to day work was governed by an itinerary that was kept by her staff to by-the-second precision, and she was currently brimming in the thick of her morning routine. This minute of this hour was breakfast and preparation. It sounded simple, but it was a process involving no less than six people.

The page carrying the pastry tray stepped back as the one carrying the hot tea tray stepped forward, and Zelda partook daintily as she listened to her chief steward give the morning report. The dressmaker and the seamstress who handled her wardrobe had already departed, leaving their monarch in an informal blue vest over a white shirt with a white pleated skirt. As the steward finished his preliminary reporting, Zelda waved away her handmaiden from the involved process of brushing out her hair, which was loose down her back besides the pins and clips that would keep it behind her.

"So, is there anything of note scheduled today?" Zelda asked her steward, an older man with a stiff neck, named Donald. He wore a formal staff uniform, which for men was a sort of tuxedo with full tailed jacket, and his brown hair and full beard was trimmed with precision. "I know that I personally had nothing particular in mind."

"Well, my lady," he ran a finger down the register he held, "none of the administrative departments registered any audience requests by the midnight deadline last night. I believe everyone is far too preoccupied with their tasks to request consultation. The disposal of your time, as usual, is at your discretion."

Zelda nodded and bid her handmaiden, Mary, a fond farewell. The dark-haired girl was a year younger than her and had been with her since she was seven, first as a playmate, then as a personal aide. Morning preparation completed, Zelda treated herself to another pastry and sip of tea as she let herself relax, putting on an outward show of contemplation for her steward. He'd mentioned that her time was her own, but that was something of a formality, even now, and thus the show.

Zelda, as monarch, had 'absolute power' in the lands of Hyrule. In a purely technical sense, she didn't have to do anything at all, because no one had the authority to hold her accountable for her actions, no matter what those actions might be. The unspoken limits to that freedom were heavier and more binding than the most massive of iron manacles, and she wasn't talking about her own sense of responsibility and personal duty. But even those two gargoyles of the monarchy, Tradition and Bureaucracy, could be subverted if the ruler was committed to debauchery. It struck her as important that she didn't give anyone in her power structure the impression that she would shirk her duties and 'enjoy' her power, and not only because an austere lifestyle would make her unassailable on one more front when dealing with public image.

"Uh, Your Majesty, perhaps you need not make work for yourself today." Donald broke her quiet contemplation rather tentatively, and Zelda sighed with relief in her own mind. A little longer and she'd have had to make the suggestion herself. "Everyone has been positively inspired by your leadership since… that business in May… and it might behoove you to take a break during this lull."

Zelda turned from her pastry to regard the man with an icy stare. It held none of the force she could have put behind it—it was all a ruse, after all—but he still stiffened as it came to rest on him. Then she smiled, and he started breathing again.

"That sounds nice. I even have a decent idea of what I might do. Ashei is going to be here today, right?" Zelda asked, knowing it to be true. Honestly, her memory had become so good that she didn't even require a steward for more than the obnoxious trivialities of organizing her time. Still, it helped if you let them feel useful whenever the opportunity arose.

"Yes, she was coming from her work at the Castle Town Barracks to consult with the Captain about your personal guard," Donald said, reciting from memory. It wasn't hard to memorize the itinerary memorandum of her ministers, and it was his job. It _wasn't_ hers, but she memorized that and a thousand other things every day, _anyway_. The perfect recall was actually a little unnerving sometimes, like when she could cite the page and line of every sentence in the last book of political theory she'd devoured. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I have some ideas for an entertaining afternoon," Zelda admitted, "please tell Madame Galtry that I'll need my fencing gear turned out for later this morning. Ask Lord Reanald's major domo to free up the practice hall for the same time, and call a runner for the message I'm drafting to the Minister. I hate to distract her from her duties, but I'm sure she'd appreciate the suggestion I have in mind."

Donald bowed without comment, obviously happy to see her enthusiastic about something other than her work, and he stepped aside to attend to her commands immediately. At her gesture, the pages bearing her breakfast also departed with a pair of neat bows, and Zelda was left alone in her bedchamber. The whispering stone hung heavily on her neck, and she waited a few long minutes to be sure no one else would drop in. Then she stood up and rushed to her vanity table, pulled out the pendant and projected it onto the white-painted wood.

The stone had buzzed for her attention an hour past, coincidentally at the exact time Mary had come to ring her awake for her morning wash. She'd let the message linger, assuming that he'd not chance something utterly urgent to a non-voice communication. Now that she read it, she sighed out the stress of second-guessing that choice she'd been shouldering all morning. "Midday plus minus 2 hours" it said, in that messy scrawl. That matched Zelda's plans quite nicely, actually, and she smiled. She would while the morning away with Ashei, and then spend a long, private luncheon waiting for her ear into foreign lands.

**Monseille Keep Main Barracks, The Principality of Ghent**

Duke Orlouge sat in his high-backed leather chair and stared out the enormous windows of his mansion's office. The sun was low in the sky and the city was coming to life outside his window, but all of that was rather superfluous. His fine Caredan grandfather clock struck the hour, and he knew that it was finally time. Standing stiffly after a sleepless night, he drew the heavy velvet blinds and plunged his office into darkness. It would not contact him unless the darkness was pristine.

In moments, the decorative copper brazier standing on his desk smoldered into life, casting the room in a subtle orange glow. The glow vented a luminous smoke, and the light it gave off subtly stung the eyes.

"You 'av contacted us?" moaned an alien voice in oddly accented Ghentese. The voice seemed to emanate from the smoke itself, and no matter how many times he heard it, the Duke always felt unnerved by it. Still, today marked the fruition of plans lain years ago, and if this late-coming ally was not to be trusted, she had still been instrumental to advancing his timetables.

"I finally located an ideal patsy for the plan I described to you," the Duke spoke to the smoke, confident he was understood. "I'll have 'caught' him by this afternoon, and we'll have all the damning evidence we need to capitalize on the 'state of emergency' you so artfully initiated. The army will march on Hyrule before the end of the week."

"Gud. _Barry_ gud." The oddity of the voice was hard to define, but the round weight to the vowels hinted at a native tongue that bore little resemblance to Ghentese.

"My previous statement stands, however," the Duke went on, "you must reign in the raids if we are to convince all that the greater threat is not from the south."

"Der be many ah war-party I 'av small control ober. _Deal_ wit it." The Duke listened to that deep, only vaguely feminine voice, and huffed at the usual disrespect.

"Also, it must be perceived that we can treat with your people in good faith, or the arrangements we've reached will come to naught. My man has already left with the diplomatic papers, under the guise of censuring insubordinate yokels at the border. See that he is not a victim of those you cannot control."

"Jast 'old up your end of da bagan, Or-lou-ge," the voice played on his name, as usual. "I 'elp you inta da throne, you 'elp me break da 'ylians."

"I haven't forgotten," Orlouge shook his head, picking at his luxurious robe in a nervous gesture. "Though I still fail to see what interest a creature like you could have in that foreign mud-heap."

"An ya need not know eidah!" the voice snapped, "jast remembah dat ya keep ta da bagahn or we get to 'yrule by goin' tru ya lands, eatin' well all da way!"

The smoke vanished in a sudden puff, dissipating as a smoke ring expanded from its center. When it cleared, the room was dark again, and the Duke opened the curtains for light as he chewed on bitter fury. These allies of his were utterly detestable, but his burning hate for them was easily surpassed by his hunger for the throne, the throne his younger brother stole from him. This day of reckoning was foretold the moment his father passed him over in the succession, and it was time that he got what was his. For that end, no ally was too foul, no sacrifice too vile. If it would make him Prince, he'd kick open the gates of heaven and rape the Mother Goddess herself.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda parried a thrust, feinted inside her opponent's guard, then thrust for a low point with her blunted practice rapier. The thrust was parried as easily as her feint had been read, and her opponent riposted elegantly. Zelda was tossed off balance, and felt a poke in her chest pads right between her breasts. The poke spoiled her wavering balance, and she found herself flat on her butt the next instant. The stuffed leather pads took the sting out of the fall, but she felt another very real sting on her pride that could not be so easily cushioned.

"Point, Your Majesty. I think that makes it what? Twenty-seven to eight?" The other fencer said, only slightly gloating. Ashei had been given specific orders not to go easy on her monarch, but at the same time, it never paid to taunt the person who determined your pay.

"Well," Zelda huffed, breathing heavily as she curled into a slightly more dignified pose and pulled off her faceguard, her blond ponytail tumbling free, "I suppose I did ask for a workout. Remind me to be more careful of the orders I give in the future."

"Noted," Ashei said, pulling off her own mask. Her sweat-dampened braids tumbled out in a white deluge, and her smile was gracious considering the circumstances. She offered Zelda a hand up, and the Princess took it without further embarrassment.

"Well, I believe that's about enough of that—a little humility is a good thing, but this is getting ridiculous." Zelda dusted off her white bodysuit and rubbed at the sore spot on her chest. The pads hadn't quite muffled that last blow.

"You fence quite well, Your Majesty," Ashei assured her, and Zelda sensed no flattery in the woman's words. She'd have known, too. "Myself, I prefer broadsword tactics to fencing. Rarely will you meet an opponent on the battlefield in single combat, and then there's the matter of armor. Of course, lack of utility didn't keep father from drilling me on it."

"Yes, right," Zelda assured herself that Ashei had no idea that she was rubbing in her victory. The other woman thought she was assuaging Zelda, demonstrating that she was almost as socially clueless as some men. "Water."

The command drew a page with a pitcher of iced water and a tray of cups. Thus refreshed, the two women retired to a table in one corner and enjoyed the breeze wafting through the open windows. The training room was mostly a tacked-on accoutrement of rich lifestyle, almost never used by the Reanalds family. The Reanalds men preferred riding as their source of exercise, and Lady Reanalds was of the opinion that corsets and right diet were the tools that should maintain feminine form. Still, the entire mansion had been made to high standard, and the room was luxuriously appointed with hardwood surfaces and high ceilings.

"I don't quite understand why you kept winning so easily," Zelda broke the relaxed silence with a good-natured inquiry, certainly free of bitterness at her near-total defeat. "I've made a close study of fencing, I know most everything there is to know about it. I can recite every move possible from every stance in three different styles, from memory, and still it comes to this. It always seemed as though I should be at least holding my ground, but every time you just—"

"Anticipated?" Ashei finished for her, not hiding her smile. "I applaud you on your accomplished study, Your Majesty, but if you will forgive the comment, watching you fight is like watching a moving version of the manual of arms."

"Excuse me?" Zelda made sure to put curiosity, not outrage, into that response. Ashei had her full attention now.

"I agree that you have a wide understanding of the style, Your Majesty, but there is such a thing as being _too_ elegant and close to form."

"Wait—you mean—" Zelda grasped what she was being told almost right away, and wanted to slap herself.

"Quite. You follow the textbook forms so closely that you're just plain predictable. After all, I read those textbooks too. When you combine that advantage of prediction with simple factors like our differences in strength and the years I've spent training sword maneuvers into my muscle-memory, I'm afraid the outcome was certain before we even began."

Zelda glowered at her chief general, and Ashei suddenly seemed to realize she might be speaking a tad too frankly. Her look of back-pedaling apology was so honest that Zelda cracked a smile and turned away to suppress a giggle. If it were a man, Zelda would have to worry about emasculating him with laughter, but with Ashei she didn't have that problem. Thus it was that much harder to keep a regally serene air with her, though not nearly as impossible as it had been with Link.

"So, Miss Expert," Zelda began, "you're saying that knowledge of weapons use will never trump training and the killer instinct, right? I suppose that much should have been self-evident, but I guess I had to experience it before it really sank in. I kept thinking about what move to meet each of yours with—"

"And in that time you stopped to think, I was already past your guard. True martial ability, at least in simple combat, comes when you can remove thought from the process of defeating your opponent, and make the correct reaction automatic to the action itself. But then, that's not quite right either."

"Now what are you on about?" Zelda asked, watching the way Ashei became slightly more distant in thought. This was something her hasty, unfocused studying had yet to even touch on, and her curiosity controlled her.

"Training to a reflexive edge is an advantage and disadvantage at once," Ashei went on, her mind elsewhere. "They say that the mark of a true blademaster is an instinctual understanding of combat, such that even entirely unfamiliar attacks can be met with creative reactions at reflexive speed. Of course, there's no such thing as a blademaster—that's just old fairytales. Still, I suppose if all you're trying to do is kill the opponent, that would be the ideal."

"Wait, what's that? A blademaster? I've never heard that before." Zelda's brain was kicking into overdrive again, her mind cross-referencing all she knew for that term on all three cycles.

"Oh? Well, I'm not surprised, I suppose," Ashei admitted, "It's just an old story my father used to tell. In his youth, he spent some time in the steppes out beyond the western desert, and even met some of the nomads. One group called themselves the Guerdo, although my father doubted they were the ones of legend—that civilization died out ages ago. Anyway, that's where he heard the tale of the blademaster." Seeing her monarch's rapt, almost child-like attention, Ashei smiled and continued with a bit more enthusiasm.

"According to the Guerdo, every now and then, a person is born who has an intimate, natural understanding of weaponry, combat, and to a lesser extent, warfare. Its not trained in at all, but something instinctive, transcending training and martial education. Of course, such a person can still benefit from education, but the legends speak of children that pick up old farming tools and generate fighting styles that defeat ten and twenty-to-one odds."

"How could that even be possible?" Zelda asked, but made sure not to make it sound too disparaging. They lived in a world where magic bags that were bigger on the inside were a staple of the packing industry, and where evil sorcerers with stolen divine magic made one-man coup attempts.

"Heh, it is just a fairy tale, You Majesty," Ashei qualified, slightly embarrassed, "but the explanations behind it are still somewhat intriguing. Some say these people are blessed by the gods, which seems to be a theme out of history that's hardly unique to Hyrule." The back-handed reference to Zelda and Link did not go unnoticed, but Zelda herself made no comment.

"Others say that it's something of a universal balance generated by warfare, death, and destruction. It is a common belief that war, like many highly emotional, massive events, generates a kind of energy all its own. Blademasters are simply a way for that energy to express itself. Of course, I'm just saying what I've heard. I'm no thaumaturgist, I haven't got a clue how it might actually work, if it's even true. It's just a story I always liked. It was pleasant to imagine being able to automatically understand how to use weapons, since I spent so much time training with them."

"Well, yes, I can certainly see your point there. For myself, I believe I'll stick to more academic pursuits. This is certainly good exercise, and the royal spellblade was meant to be used, if not necessarily for fencing, but I doubt I'll ever have the time to be a better than passing swordswoman, if drill is really as important as you've shown."

"Oh worry not, Your Majesty," Ashei assured her, "no one would ever expect you to lead from the front like kings of old. You're the kingdom's great treasure, we would all lay down our lives for you."

The sentiment was genuine, and Zelda was touched before she could even hope to respond. The moment lasted, and Ashei's staunch refusal to look embarrassed by her comment forced Zelda to feel every second of it. It was one of those reminders of everything she had to live up to, and it didn't let up until she stood away from the table and stepped back.

"Thank you Ashei, for everything." Zelda's general nodded and smiled, and leaned back to relax as her monarch walked away. Such was also a breach of etiquette, but there were few in Zelda's own power structure who regarded the general as bound by such things anymore.

As for the Princess, she walked away with much on her mind. The blademaster legend seemed significant somehow, though she couldn't imagine why. However, there was little time to dwell on such things. As it was, she had time enough to wash up before it would be prudent to free herself in isolation and wait for Link's next contact.

**Monseille Keep, The Principality of Ghent**

Link dozed contentedly in the shadow of his leafy camouflage, but kept half an ear out for any noises of interest. It was the cat-like half-sleep he'd found useful over and over again whenever exhaustion claimed him in dangerous environs. Logic had once told him that anxiety and anticipation were supposed to make sleeping in these circumstances impossible. Then again, logic had abandoned him when he'd discovered that he could look into the giant, goggling eye of a fifteen ton skulltuala and feel nothing but a combat rush and the tingle of arrow-flight angles processing in his subconscious.

This was not so much one of the changes his journey had wrought that was bothering him as it was something that he barely even noticed. At times he often felt he _should_ be afraid, when his mind caught up with what exactly he was doing, but fear just hadn't been visiting him at all. Anger, certainly, had had its place, when Colin was stolen away by the boss bullblin. Heartbreak and pain, when Midna had seemed lost and Gannon gloated over her broken mask. But fear? Nah. It was rather liberating most of the time, although it could be weird at times as well. One thing it _wasn't_, was frightening, for obvious reasons.

Link's ear against the stone caught nearby footsteps, and he snapped out of his half-dreaming considerations just in time to hear several men in heavy armor clanking about in the room above. It occurred to him one of the places they might check, and he secreted himself under an azalea in a huge planter just in time to avoid a blue-sash guard making a casual survey of the gardens around the balcony. He didn't look that hard—and why bother? The only people out there would be the gardeners, and they'd all be locked out for the duration. Only the force of discipline got him to bother looking at all.

Unfortunately for Link, the guard's post was to stand out on the balcony. Fortunately for Link, eavesdropping does not require line of site. Discreetly, Link took the whispering stone and activated it, sending a call through to Zelda. This was another possible snagging point, and he filled the waiting time by reaching into a belt pouch and producing another magical artifact he'd been awarded.

The Duke, as his answer to 'how can a man who speaks Hylian spy on the Ghentese,' had produced a cylinder about the size of a sword hilt. When the end was tapped a certain way, it would record anything said within earshot until the end was tapped again in a different way, and it could all be played back again later on. He'd be paid the second half of the fee when the filled rememberer was delivered to his 'masters.' As spy tools went it was first-class, and Link hadn't been able to resist fooling around with it early that morning. There was something fascinating about hearing your own voice come from outside your head—the largest part being how oddly different it sounded.

Now Link activated the sound remembering device and set it up on the balcony, pointing at the doors. The guard had left them open to let in a breeze, and even over the side, Link could clearly hear people making ready and getting settled.

"Link, I'm here," Zelda's voice whispered through his pendent, and Link let out a very quiet sigh of relief. That was one problem solved, anyway. Still, the noise almost stirred the bored guard, and Link hurried to cup the stone in his hands and muffle her voice. He raised it to his lips to respond.

"The meeting is just getting started," he barely breathed the words as he held the stone right next to his mouth, "listen, but don't speak. We've got company."

When there was no response, Link assumed she'd gotten the message, and peeled a leaf off a plant nearby. He wrapped the stone in the leaf to negate its brilliant sparkle, and then set it up on the sunny ledge next to the cylinder. At that point, as far as he was concerted, his part of the mission was done. Now his only worry was getting back out again.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

"—We've got company."

The words were so quiet Zelda could barely hear them, but she understood. There was a sort of crackling noise over the connection for a while, but when it stopped, she could hear other quiet voices in the background. They were talking in Ghentese, and she knew the time had come. Thus, she held the stone to her ear and leaned back in her comfy office chair. It took her a moment to switch her brain to Ghentese, but she was ready when the first words became clearly audible.

"—has been no change from last week, My Liege," spoke a middle-aged male voice, burdened by guilt. "Her Majesty simply cannot be roused. We have tried everything, but ever since the kidnapping—"

"Quiet, you fool!" snapped another voice, a voice with enough nervous, barely-restrained violence to make the reprimand sting, "We _still_ don't know how they penetrated our security! They might have ears, even here! And if they might, we must assume that anyone might. Did you not listen when I distributed the code books?"

"Yes, our security was breached—and whose fault is that?" a third, female voice nearly spat the venomous accusation.

"That is enough, Alphonse, Cele!" a much deeper voice interceded, and this was couched with a weight of authority and a terrible ache. "Bickering will get us nowhere nearer to resolving this nightmare. Now, our enemies struck deep inside our guard, but none could have predicted it. It is not the Guard Captain Alphonse's fault to carry alone, Cele, and I'll thank you not to waste time with blame. Thank you, Doctor, you are excused. Please, continue to do what you can for my Lorraine. Though I fear you'll find there is little medicine can do for a broken heart."

"Yes, My Lord, I will do all that is in my power," the first man spoke again, sounding guilty that his power came to so little. "I take my leave."

There was a silence for some time, ostensibly so that the doctor could leave. That left the Prince, the man identified as Alphonse the Guard Captain, and the woman named Cele. In her mind's eye, Zelda had already arranged them around a room by the relative sound of their voices through the whispering stone.

"Now, Cele, what has my spymistress to report?" The Prince asked, hardly sounding hopeful. "And I'll have no more out of you, Alphonse. Codebooks be damned, we need to discuss this, and I don't care who's listening. It's not like we can keep this mess quiet much longer, anyway. At some point, we'll have to assume that they've already killed Jeanette."

"My Lord," she began, voice edged with a bitterness, "I fear that I can tell you little more than we already knew. Someone, somehow, broke in to the castle and captured the Princess."

Zelda inhaled sharply, and now she was sitting up on the edge of her seat. Princess Jeanette was only fourteen years old, but her beauty and kindness were so renowned that they were cliché, even here in Hyrule. If she'd been kidnapped…

"A full investigation of her rooms and the Keep revealed no clue as to who did it or how in the world they managed it," Cele continued, "and that is almost too incredible to believe. When the ransom note arrived in a puff of smoke, sorcery became the clear answer to that mystery, but the entire situation makes so little sense—"

"Stop trying to justify your failure, Cele!" Alphonse's brash baritone interrupted, "your sin in this is at least as great as mine. Just admit that the filthy cur who stole our sapphire has eluded your snoops as thoroughly as he did my guards."

"I said enough, Alphonse!" the Prince shouted this time, and both his advisers shuddered into silence. "If you would continue, Cele?"

"Well… yes…" Cele took a moment to get her bearings back, "it all makes so little sense that there in turn must be some method to the madness, unless true insanity is the ultimate motive. We can draw clues from the kidnappers demands, if from nothing else. We must recognize that if he had the power to break past security, why not simply assassinate Your Majesty, and the whole royal family, for that matter, while we were unawares?"

"Certainly that makes some sense," the Prince followed her logic. "His goal must be linked to Hyrule somehow, and not directly focused on us at all. Why else would he abduct our sapphire, Jeanette, as a bargaining chip, and then demand that we invade Hyrule in exchange for her return?"

"And yet," Alphonse broke in with a much more reasonable tone, "what sense does that make? He must understand that we are merely playing for time with these troop movements. He must know that we can't trust him to deal in good faith. Already we cannot be sure the Princess lives. But besides that, the Princess would never forgive us if we waged a war to spare her life."

"Yes, and she would not forgive herself either," the Prince said, solemnly. "Though it breaks my heart, we must very soon consider withdrawing the muster orders. I received a report this morning that troll raids have been spotted as far north as the crossroads."

There were varying sounds of shock and disbelief from the Prince's advisers. As the Prince waited for that to sink in, Zelda's brain was working a mile a minute. On the one hand, she was incredibly relieved that the attack she'd feared from Ghent was a ruse, if the reasons behind it had been completely unexpected. On the other hand, her heart went out to the Prince, who was suffering under an intrigue that might have already wiped out his family. Auru's words came back to her, and she connected that burdened voice to a man who truly cared for his people and for the maintenance of peace. It was painful to realize how poorly she'd thought of him up to now, with her preconceived notions and fear for her own people blinding her judgment.

"Then… I suppose we have no choice," Cele admitted, breaking the grim silence that had come on the heels of that news. "Still, if what the note says was true, to rescind the order will mean the Princess's immediate execution. There must be some other delay we can manage—my people have a trail on the mystic locus in the Princess's hairpin. We haven't been able to localize it, the sorcerer responsible for all this has been clouding our own mage's efforts, but it seems to be coming from the south. If we only had more time—"

There was a sudden bang which could only come from the door being kicked in, and Zelda nearly jumped out of her skin in shock. A riot of noise filled her ear as weapons and armor clanged, challenges were barked, and feet tapped a cavalcade on hard wood.

"What is the meaning of this!" the Prince bellowed, and Zelda could tell that he'd jumped to his feet. "I demand to know why my private meeting is—"

"Brother!" a deeper male voice overruled his, "There is no time! Someone has infiltrated the keep! I fear there may be an assassin nearby, even now!"

"Sebastein?" the Prince asked, voice sounding shocked, "an assassin you say? But what—"

"Quickly men—the ceiling!" There was a sound of metal on wood, and Zelda was _really_ reeling now. Just when she didn't think things could get any stranger, her ears filled with a grating static like crystal on concrete, and next it was Link's voice she heard.

"That traitorous Ghentese _whoreson_!"

**Monseille Keep, The Principality of Ghent**

Link pressed up against the balcony, his head just beneath the ledge, and mumbled foul curses as he tucked away the voice rememberer and hung the whispering stone back around his neck. That Godessess-damned traitor had double-crossed him. Of course, he couldn't be _certain_ what the Duke was saying in there, but the way those guards were beating in ceiling panels with their long swords, he didn't really have to try too hard to guess. It was infuriating, and not only because he'd half-expected it and had gone in on this plan anyway.

The balcony guard had gone inside to cover his charges during the commotion, and that gave Link a window of opportunity. He didn't really have a clue how to get out—the original plan of waiting until nightfall and going out with the laundry was shot to hell—but he knew he couldn't stay out here. When the Duke didn't find him in the ceiling, he was probably going to start tearing this place apart.

With a half-shadow of regret, Link reached under his cloak toward the small of his back. Nestled there above his bomb-bag and between two of his supply pouches were the two clawshots, his last real souvenir of the heavenly-mandated quest he'd survived. He'd made a stupid promise to himself to not use them, just like he'd decided to not use his sword if he could avoid it, only with even less reasonable justification.

Of course, shit had just gone south, massively, and there was no longer time for these self-sufficiency games he'd been fooling with. In a motion he'd trained down to hard-wired reflex, Link snatched the clawshot, aimed, and fired in the space of seconds. The rattling chain rocketed up, latched onto the ivy beside the balcony of the fourth floor room above this one, and jerked him skyward in a riot of clacking metal. He had no illusion about that going unnoticed, and he hurried to get his fingers into the ivy and pull himself up the last few feet. He leaped from the wall to the ivy on the bottom of the balcony and vaulted around the lip of the balcony to land on his ass over its railing. He could hear shouting voices below, and risked a quick peek to find a gaggle of overly-excited guards searching every direction but up for the source of the racket he'd made.

"Oh man," Link sighed, as he turned to the balcony doors and found an unlit room to greet him, "that was too close."

"Do you mind filling me in?" Zelda's voice sang up from his chest, and Link nearly fell over in surprise. He hadn't realized the stone was still active. He started to choke it into silence with his hand, but then realized her voice hadn't been any louder than his when he'd been talking to himself.

"Things here are a little… hectic, Your Majesty," Link informed her as he tried the balcony door and found it locked. It was a moment's effort to smash in one of the little glass window pains and unlatch the lock.

"It certainly sounds like it. I deduce that the Prince's brother had something to do with your infiltrating the keep?" Zelda's voice had an edge of hunger, of eagerness, and Link knew better than to try and put this off till later. It's not like he had a clue what to do next anyway.

"Duke Orlouge helped me infiltrate the keep to 'gather information.' That was him directing guards toward where he advised me to hide. I didn't know he was the Prince's brother." Link kept his sentences informative and succinct as he let himself in to the abandoned room.

The space was immediately recognizable as someone's bedroom, although it looked abandoned. Link did some mental accounting, noted the generally frilly, lavish decor, and figured it to be the Princess's room. That clued him in, and he looked to the bed to find it as abandoned as the rest of the place. Martin had said they claimed she was sick. Wherever she was, she wasn't here, being ill.

"Oh, goodness Link, this is bad. Goddesses… this is _terrible_!" Zelda sounded incredibly concerned. It was enough to get his full attention. The only way she'd be in a position to say that was if that conversation had been even more fruitful than he'd hoped.

"What do you mean? What were they talking about in there?"

"This betrayal from the Prince's brother… it's obvious he means to cast blame on Hyrule. But… there's only the kidnapping to blame on us…" She was thinking out loud, and Link didn't interrupt, no matter how little sense she was making. "So that means the only way this will make any sense is if he eliminates everyone who knows it _wasn't_ us. The Duke… he's going to—"

Zelda's intuition never had the chance to predict it, because the Duke was a very quick worker. Her words were cut off when the entire keep abruptly rocked with the force of a huge explosion, Link flying bodily off his feet as the balcony doors blew in and lashed shattered glass off of his armor. He woke from the tumble to an insistent ringing in his ears. The whispering stone was glowing on his chest, and Zelda was probably talking, but he couldn't make out a thing.

Dazed and disoriented, Link staggered to the broken doors and out onto the balcony. Sound slowly started to return as he found the center of the keep filled with a cloud of dust. It began to clear slowly, and Link found himself facing an entirely changed view. The explosion had come from right nearby on the fourth floor, two balconies over, in fact. Where there had been a bit of ivy-covered wall, there was now a jagged, gaping hole.

Link heard Zelda's voice shouting for some word from him almost frantically, but for a few seconds, nothing would come to mind. All he could think of was: fourth floor, royal bedrooms. Where would you rush your monarch, his staff, and his elite guards during an assassination scare? How many letters were in the word 'regicide?' His nose was stinging, and he noted almost bemusedly that it was Hylian blasting powder—he knew the smell by heart.

"Link! Link! Are you alright?" Zelda begged for a response.

"Princess… we've been set up," he told her, as the full truth of that sunk in and his head began to clear from that massive scrambling.

"I know, Link," She said, almost sobbing in relief to hear him answer her. "I know." With her panic assuaged, Zelda's voice gained a measure of cold, calculating, ruthlessness. "It may be too late for Prince Philip, but there's still a chance for Princess Jeanette. Do you understand, Link? It's time to counterattack."

**Second Full Revision Note:**

The main features of this chapter are my belated introduction of the concept of blademasters and my decision to portray Link as a man physically incapable of being afraid of violent, dangerous situations. Both were things I'd never really considered until I was writing this chapter, but that would shape the rest of the story afterward. I had unconsciously lain the groundwork for both plot developments, but formalizing them here was still a leap that proves my philosophy about the production of serialized fiction. This also became a point of contention for several of my readers, who sense my mounting foreshadowing to the fact that Link was destined to be a very much larger than life hero, and did not agree with that decision. Fortunately for anyone who enjoyed how overblown the story becomes later, I'm writing this, and not a coalition of my reviewers. For anyone who would have liked it to remain as traditional and restrained as it is in these early sections, oh well. That more or less went out the window as soon as this narrative style stopped being productive practice, and otherwise became boring to me.


	8. Exit Strategy

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 8: Exit Strategy**

**Monseille Keep, The Principality of Ghent: Before the Assassination**

"Quickly Philip, this way!" Duke Sebastein Orlouge had his brother by the arm and fairly dragged him toward the stairwell. His mind was working in a furious near-panic as his plans threatened to unravel around him. The Hylian mercenary he'd been counting on to discover and slay as the final justification for this emergency rush hadn't been where he was supposed to be, and that left him in a tight spot. Of course, it was far too late to stop now, and that's what made his course of action so clear. He'd just have to improvise after the fact—that there was currently no corpse to tout as evidence was a problem to deal with later.

"Hurry, all of you, secure the Prince!" the Duke stoked the fires of urgency with pure bluff, rushing the crowd of his brother's inner circle up the stairwell to the royal bedchambers on the fourth floor. There was a raucous thunder as all those burly men in heavy armor clattered by, half in front and half behind, and the Duke kept his arm around the Prince. He harried the younger man discreetly, trying to keep him off balance so he couldn't ask questions or countermand his orders. This ruse only had to last a little bit longer.

The lot of them came out of the stairwell on the fourth floor and rushed over to the master bedroom, and the Duke rushed his brother inside to deposit him. Guards and ministers came in after them, and the balcony and door were manned with grim-looking fellows with big swords. It was a shame they'd never even see the killer blow coming. It was such a dreadful waste of a lifetime's training and ironclad loyalty.

"Guard the Prince with your lives. My men will search the building, this assassin will be found and brought to justice," The Duke turned to leave, knowing haste to be his best ally in the fight to keep them from questioning.

"Now wait!" Baron Alphonse, Captain of the Prince's Guard, was a bit quicker on the uptake than the Duke would have liked. "Why hasn't this gone through the proper channels? The Keep and the Prince are _my_ responsibility! I demand to be informed of the situation!"

"There's no time—" the Duke thought fast, "the intruder was spotted on his way over the inner curtain wall. My men have already been briefed on his description and are searching the keep and fortress as we speak. You must concentrate on keeping my brother safe while I worry about apprehending this fiend."

"Well—I—" the man couldn't argue with a plan that appeared to be in his monarch's specific interest, and the way the Duke had insinuated personal outrage that _his_ brother was targeted was a perfect finale. The Duke turned to leave again, only to have his arm caught by the Prince himself.

"Sebastein, my brother, please be careful," the Prince pleaded. The Duke considered his younger brother, and it was like looking in a mirror through time. The man was younger than him by six years, but the responsibility of office had aged him until he looked genuinely older. "I know we've had our differences, but I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you. Watch your back."

"Of course, Philip," The Duke replied, working furiously to suppress the mountain of bilious rage boiling in his heart. To be considered so lovingly by the object of his murderous hate was unbearable, and he welcomed the opportunity to rush out of the room.

Duke Orlouge's own guards caught up in his wake as he rounded the corner. As soon as the blue-sashes were out of sight, he removed a small glass sphere from his belt pouch and held it up to his eye. The bauble glowed with a subtle inner light, and it marked the final step in his plot. This was it, the defining moment of his life, and the ultimate culmination of plans he'd first began to lay well over a decade ago. There was no turning back after this.

Duke Sebastein Orlouge flung the sphere against the wall, where it shattered into dust. He counted in his mind, and when he reached three, he ducked into the stairwell and covered his ears. The world rocked around him.

**Princess Jeanette's Room, Monseille Keep, The Principality of Ghent: After the Assassiantion**

"Counterattack, eh?" Link asked, ready and eager now that his head was on straight again. "Sounds like fun, but I'm gonna need some details, Your Majesty. Any idea how I should go about this whole, 'counterattack' thing? At the moment, I don't even have a clue how I'm going to get out of this place with my head still attached."

"I know Link, I'm… working on that. A lot of what I'm thinking of is just supposition and speculation, so I'm going to need you to answer some questions for me. For one thing, do you have any idea what the Duke's penetration of keep security is like? It could help a lot if you can give me a measure of how much he's capable of besides planting a bomb in the Prince's bedroom."

"What, that's not _enough_?" Link asked, but shook his head, organizing his response. He was standing in the private room of a mysteriously disappeared foreign princess talking to his own gods-appointed monarch over a magical artifact. Someday he'd have to kick himself for having an adventure addiction. "He was able to hand me a ready-made plan that would have taken any schmuck with muscles into the heart of the keep. He gave me a key to the back door, so to speak. Ah, let's see… and he had this magical item to let me record the conversation I spied upon. How's that?"  
"Well, that more or less confirms what I already suspected," Zelda said, though Link had the sense he was something of an afterthought to her now. "My suggestion would be to leave the Keep and the city of Monseille as quickly as you can. The Duke's plan will come apart at the seams if anyone of credibility escapes with the knowledge that it wasn't us behind this attack. His next logical move would be a purge, probably using emergency powers based off this perceived 'attack.'"

"Yeah, _escape,_ how about that," Link muttered sarcastically as he noted that the door into the hall was sealed, and that there was a thunderous sound of armored men running around outside. Panic was spreading through the castle as word of the explosion and just where it had gone off got around. "Oh Shit! Martin and his wife—"

"Who?" Zelda asked. Her mind lusted for more data—this was all a wonderful puzzle to the greater part of her, and she needed information to play to the best of her considerable ability.

"They know I wasn't hired as an assassin—and I _really_ doubt they were both in on this plot to kill the Prince. That means they're on his hit list. Shit—they might already be dead. I have to get out of here." Link reached back and absently loosened his sword in its sheath. Once again, escaping was easier said than done. "So, Princess, any bright ideas?"

"Yes, actually. A few." Zelda's voice held such a sense of mischievous glee that Link immediately knew he'd be going through his paces on this one. "First of all, I'm absolutely certain that the Duke has a secret way in and out of the Keep. If we assume that he both abducted the Princess and planted that bomb without being detected, then we can guess that it is both discreet and centrally located. Keep that in mind while we get the rest done."

"The rest of _what_?" Link asked, and then, "we _who_? Are you saying you're going to stick around for this? I kinda thought all that counterattack talk was just you getting caught up in the moment."

"Of course not," Zelda sounded offended, "I was totally serious. Who else is going to help you out of the mess you stepped in?"

"I—" Link almost argued, but relented instead. It's not like he wasn't totally used to having a woman riding around on his back in total safety, making critical commentary while he risked his neck. Hell, it'd be just like old times. "Fine, whatever you say. So, what first?" He tried hard not to sound too petulant about it, and was rewarded with a much more cheery tone out of his monarch.

"Well, the fist thing to do is get to the Princess's room. I overheard talk that the Princess has a spirit locus on her person. If you can get a hold of something she's had prolonged contact with, I can teach you a ritual that will help you track her down. Now the 'opposition' is all but wiped out, her abductors will probably end the spells that kept the Prince's people from doing just that."

"Abductors?" Link asked, as he began to look around the room again. It was clearly time she caught him up on what she'd learned. "She was kidnapped? I mean, yeah, you said that before, I guess, but I'm still catching up here. I thought you said the Duke kidnapped her, or something?"

"I strongly suspect that the Duke had a hand in it," Zelda explained, her tone one of unblemished patience, "However, the Prince's people didn't sound like they had a clue of any kind of inside man—they think some sorcerer somewhere was trying to blackmail them."

In a quick, concise synopsis, the Princess explained what she'd overheard while Link was hiding. The magical nature of the ransom note and the odd payment request—an invasion of Hyrule—both came as upsetting news to Link. He chewed at his lip in discontent as he sat down at a tidy, if somewhat dusty vanity table.

"Another sorcerer, huh? And this one's got a hard-on for Hyrule too?" Link griped, as he began to pore over the various items arrayed in front of the fine mirror. "Well that's just _peachy_. Not like the last two didn't turn out to be a maniac and a megalomaniac. Why can't these magical folk just stick to enchanting stuff?"

"Aren't you supposed to be working, or something?" Zelda asked, slightly miffed at his irreverent behavior. It took a moment for Link to pin down what her problem was, and then he remembered that he wasn't talking to Midna. Their mutually abusive relationship had been tempered by months of forced companionship, and his acerbic streak had been a trained defense against her snappish imperiousness.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm in the Princess's room right now, near as I can tell," he changed the subject. "Just what kind of object should I nab?"

"Oh, well, look for something she'd have had a lot of contact with," Zelda was successfully distracted. She seemed pleased at Link's ability to quickly produce results. "Preferably something she loved. I don't pretend to know how _she_ might have done it, but I kept things like that in a jewelry chest."

Link strenuously refrained from commenting on that. He'd felt odd when he'd met Zelda face to face, and for hours on end afterward. Now, with all this distance between them, she was once again a stranger and technically his boss. To even overhear that kind of intimate detail seemed intrusive on his part, and he couldn't imagine she felt much better about revealing it. The trick to minimizing that awkwardness was to stick to business. There was a job to do.

"Ah-hah!" Link said, as he picked a jewelry chest off the vanity table and popped it open. "Uhg," he made a disappointed sound, "seems her treasure chest has already been raided." The box was near to empty, only a few earrings and a charm bracelet remaining.

"Well, yes, they would have taken the best focuses for their own attempts to scry," Zelda admitted, as though that had been so self-evident that she shouldn't have had to mention it. "Keep looking around. I'm not there, I couldn't say where she might have secreted some treasure or another, but I doubt she'd mind if you intrude on her room under the circumstances. We are trying to save her life and put her on the throne, after all."

"We are?" Link asked, as he stood and moved to the bed. He checked under the pillows, between the mattress and frame, and then underneath. No luck.

"Unless you want 'Prince Sebastein' running the show," Zelda said, "we have little choice but to get a hold of an alternative claimant and back her regime. It's unfortunate that it might well mean civil war, but then, civil war _isn't_ war on Hyrule."

"Well, now that's a pretty cold-blooded assessment, Your Majesty," Link told her without mincing words. There was no condemnation in his voice; he'd save Hylian lives over Ghentese, too, just like he'd save friends before strangers. Those were the kind of priorities that you couldn't compromise on in the life-and-death situations he'd faced, not if you hope to survive. There was still a wardrobe and a bookshelf to search, and he moved to it as he waited for a response.

"I understand where this might go," Zelda answered, at length, "but there's a strong chance that we can avoid any internecine bloodshed if we can present the Princess alive and produce evidence of the Duke's betrayal. Regicide _does_ have a way of focusing public opinion."

"Fair enough," Link said, once again without inflection. The bookshelf was too shallow to hide anything, and most of the books were leather-bound references for tutors. He moved on to the wardrobe and crossed his fingers. He cracked it open, and couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

"I thought Princesses had, like, a dress for every day of the year," Link said, as he found the 'wardrobe' occupied by another chest in the bottom and a few shelves of folded clothes. The clothes turned out to be underwear, including 'female supports' as well as nightgowns and other frilly things. He swept all of that aside, checking the back corner for swag, and was disappointed.

"Oh Link, she wouldn't keep her wardrobe _on_ _hand_." Zelda was once again speaking as though it were common knowledge, and Link felt he'd identified a future sticking point between them. "She's sure to have _people_ for that kind of thing. Anyway, keep looking. This is very important."

Link would have grumbled if he'd thought it would do any good. It was quickly becoming apparent that the Twilight Princess and the Princess of Light were all too similar when it came to back-seat questing. Of course, he supposed it was _still_ nice having someone to talk to again, and there was nothing to say he couldn't be obnoxious right back at her. That's how he'd handled Midna, after all.

"Right, so this is about it," Link bent down over the trunk, finding it latched with a padlock. It was a soft, decorative thing, and required only a moment's effort to slip his dagger into it and wrench it open. "Huh. Why would she have a trunk full of gilders, gems, and wine?" Link asked, when the chest's contents caught the light from the balcony and glittered enticingly at him.

"Oh—dowry chest," Zelda said, like it should mean something. "It's sort of old-fashioned for her to keep it in her room, but that's how it used to be done. She keeps it and selects items for it as she grows up, and then presents it to her groom on her wedding day. I think it's kind of _cute_ that she's been filling hers herself."

"Cute… right." Link was about to request that Zelda get with the program, but his eye caught on something odd in the dowry chest, something out of place. It was a stuffed toy, a worn out, raggedy old thing too. As he picked it up for a closer look, he decided it was supposed to be a white horse, only it had a horn on its muzzle.

"Since when do horses have horns?" Link asked, observing the toy. Its outside was a soft terrycloth and it was stuffed with something fluffy. One of the button eyes was starting to come loose, and the gold embroidery on the horn was frayed and trailing threads. It smelled of tears.

"You mean like a unicorn?" Zelda asked, "It's a Ghentese fairytale. Why?"

"Oh, I think I've got a perfect focus," Link said, packing the stuffed toy into his belt between the clawshots and his bomb bag. "Stuffed toy, seen some heavy use. Still smells of someone, so it must have been used pretty recently. Don't care to guess why it was in her dowry chest though."

"Well, that's probably none of our business," Zelda huffed, seeming to only now realize just how much Link was violating someone's most intimate secrets on her orders. It was easy to say 'she'll understand under the circumstances,' but then you had to go and put yourself in her shoes. That couldn't be too hard for a fellow Princess. "Now, it's time we got you out of there. The Prince knew his daughter wasn't within the city limits, if not much else more than 'south.' I don't think there's anything more you can do there."

"Like hell there isn't!" Link growled, and punched his fist into his palm. "I'm going to track down that asshole Sebastein and stuff some Hylian blasting powder where the sun doesn't shine! There's no chance I'm going to let him get away with using me like that!"

"Please, Link, don't be so hasty," Zelda wasn't talking down to him; her own anger at the Duke was clear in her voice, too. "The Duke is the only one there with the clear authority to rule. If you give him what he deserves before we have the Princess back, there will be a power vacuum. Nothing would lead to a bloody, bloody civil war faster than emptying out the monarchy of a military power like Ghent. Every duke and earl in the country would raise an army. Goddesses—the barons would either throw in their lots with bigger contenders or band together and form a confederation just to compete. It would be chaos unbound."

"Okay, okay, I get the idea." Link didn't, really. He was angry at the Duke, and he was having a little difficulty prioritizing. "It's not like I'm trying to have the blood of all those guards on my hands anyway. There again, I'm also trying to avoid getting _my_ blood on _their_ hands…"

"Yes, yes, blood, right. Can you focus on escape now?" Zelda had exactly zero patience for his black humor. Really, he probably shouldn't have been making such jokes anyway, but it was often hard to think of anything genuinely funny about the situations he constantly found himself in.

"_Fine_. The doors are flat out of the question," Link thought out loud as he shifted focus back to the task at hand, "those guards are going to be combing this place like a gaggle of housewives at one of Malo's clearance sales. That leaves the ivy. 'course, there's not—"

"Ivy?" Zelda reacted like he'd just said a magic word. "What's this about Ivy?"

"Well," Link scrunched his brow up, wondering what she was onto now, "there's ivy lining the walls of the inner courtyard. It's actually just the perfect consistency for climbing. Most people don't think about it, but vines like those are nature's ladder. Why, I can't count the number of times—"

"The inner courtyard you say?" Zelda cut off his anecdote at the knees. She really _was_ onto something. "Monseille Keep in Spring…" Zelda mumbled, truly perplexing her agent.

"What now?"

"It's a painting," Zelda explained absently, "done over a hundred years ago by a Hylian ambassador. I walked past it where it hung in the castle's east stairwell at least three times a day, every day for over a decade. Tell me Link, does the keep's inner courtyard still have a well?"

"What? No, no well," Link remembered the brief look he'd had at the courtyard floor. He checked to make sure the coast was clear out on the balcony and then tried to confirm that hasty answer with another look. The billowing dust cloud obscured his view, but he was pretty sure he was right.

"Well… there sure _used_ to be one," Zelda mumbled, sounding miffed that the world refused to conform to her theories.

"What is this all about, Princess?" Link asked, exasperated, "Maybe if you clue me in, I can help you help me?"

"Well, I was just _thinking_," she put a strange emphasis on the word, perhaps not even consciously, "Ivy ladders to every room. A well with access to the cisterns. It would be _perfect_."

"Cisterns? What?" Link was clueless. It was becoming more and more clear that Zelda's brain was working on a level that her mouth was unable to describe in any satisfying way.

"Monseille wasn't built on a river," Zelda lectured, "its water supply comes from a confluence of underground springs and waterways. When they raised the walls, they built a system of subterranean aqueducts to better harness those, and to supplement their supply with rainwater. Spies and monsters traveling through the cisterns on nefarious missions has been a cliche of Ghentese folk-tales for so long that it's even mentioned in some history books. I suppose that's a little far-fetched, now that I hear it out loud, though."

"My Goddesses," Link shook his head in wonder. As he listened to her ramble her explanation, his eyes caught on the way the dust cloud billowed upward from the center of the courtyard. Wind was venting upward from somewhere, but there had been nothing but a blank layer of old paving stones down there. Unless… "Well, well, well. It's a… uh… _well_. Princess, you never cease to amaze me."

"Fantastic." Zelda's voice beamed her appreciation. "What happened?"

"It's—" The door behind him swung open with a bang, and Link turned to see a two man blue-sash patrol with weapons trained. They both had halberds at the ready, points arrayed through the doorway, expecting trouble, and a part of Link's suddenly very clear mind wondered how the hell they'd gotten those nine-foot weapons through the stairwells. Then he noticed their oddly shortened hafts. _Then_ he remembered he was supposed to be alarmed.

They spotted him on the balcony immediately and startled just as badly as he did, not actually expecting to find anyone _here_, of all places. Link drew his sword and met them with a challenging stance. Zelda might have said something more, but he only had eyes for his opponents, ready to face their simultaneous attack. Of course, they immediately proceeded to do something Link hadn't been expecting—indeed, something he hadn't seen from an opponent in a long time. They used their heads.

Link was still standing there waiting for them to waste their lives on his blade when they finally caught up to his reaction speed and made their response. They slammed the door shut and battened it, possibly by wedging their blades into it. There was then a loud sound of whistles as they called for backup. Link was left blinking in surprise.

"Well that's just beautiful," Link said, sheathing his sword. "Those two will bring this whole place down on me. They'll probably come in with a bum-rush of fully armored swordsmen, though I suppose a phalanx could also be on its way. That's certainly how _I'd_ stop me."

"Gracious, Link, do you actually think you can _take_ them?" Zelda responded to the somewhat eager, almost excited edge in his voice. A very large part of Link wanted to say yes—just as a very large part of him actually did want to stay here and try it out. The part he listened to, however, was the part running a mental simulation of such a battle. He could think of ways to waste an entire company of veteran warriors—it was a simulation he'd thought on extensively when he learned he'd be coming here.

Not one of them involved being trapped without room to retreat and in a building that would not forgive the use of high explosives. Retreating and bombs were the largest part of those plans, because if they could pin him down with sheer weight of numbers, or maybe lock him up in a disciplined formation of armored veterans, it would take a hell of a lot more than a spin attack to break out again. There were just some odds you couldn't overcome with exceptional ability, at least not without a tactical advantage to go along with it. Right now, the blue-sashes had all the tactical advantages.

"No… no, of course not," Link said, eventually, as he pulled a bomb out from under his cloak. He struck a spark off the metal plates on his gauntlet and lit the fuse, then let it tumble off his hand and into the courtyard. It hit right on target, and the thick waterproofing paper more than muffled its bounce, so that it settled right over the paving stones that were venting enough wind to make currents in the settling dust cloud. Link perked an ear, and waited for the tell-tale sound of a secret passage opening… by which of course he meant the sound of an explosive demolishing a thin barrier.

There was shouting outside the door, and Link didn't need a translator to understand that they were organizing to attack. He vaulted up onto the guard railing and balanced on the banister, looking down over the sun-drenched disaster area at the gaping, black hole in the center of the courtyard. Apparently, the paving stones had been set on top of a metal grill to cover the well over, and now there were visible remains jutting from the sides of the hole. They had probably been cemented down originally, and an opportunistic agent had simply rediscovered the forgotten pathway and rendered some of the stones covering it moveable.  
"Okay, time to ditch this place," Link said to no one in particular. He was just about to swing around the balcony and start his decent when the doors busted in again. This time, a line of men in three-quarters plate wielding large shields and broadswords thundered in at a flat sprint. They spotted him on the balcony railing and formed a wall of armored bodies just inside the doorway to the balcony. The door was only wide enough for them to come at him single-file, and the way the first one advanced with his sword poised behind his shield, there was little question of them even attempting to let him surrender.

Link gave the lead blue-sash his most dazzling smile, waved, and hopped off the balcony. He was treated to sounds of terrified shock and various shouting as he snatched the ivy on the bottom of the balcony and swung forward, leaping over to the wall and grabbing on with both hands. The ivy didn't take the sudden weight so well, and he barely had a grip before it was coming out of the wall under his hands. Once the first roots jerked free, more and more followed in a chain reaction, and Link was taking the express route down the wall before he knew it. He clung fiercely to his ever-lengthening ivy rope as he buffeted against the wall, and one long ride later, he hit the ground with a thump.

Link didn't take time to orient himself, he just started running as soon as his feet were under him. There was still a decent fog of dust circulating in the courtyard, and if he could use it as cover, he might be able to ditch pursuit immediately. It turned out that taking a second to orient himself would have been a good idea, because by the time he stopped to consider it, he realized he had lost _himself_ in the dust and debris. He was just about to try and backtrack to a wall when he missed a step.

"Gah!" Link shouted in surprise as he began to fall, and then righted himself and kicked one foot forward and one foot back until each one struck a wall. His boots skidded for a moment on the wet stone of the old well, and then he caught, jerking to a stop in the darkness. All of that had been automatic reflex, and he blinked as his brain tried to catch up, the burning in his thighs telling him he ought to find another way to stay up, and fast.

"Link? Are you alright?" Link once again only became aware of Zelda's voice after the fact. He was now perched in near-total darkness of an abandoned well shaft, the sound of moving water below him and shouting voices coming from the dusty haze above.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm just peachy," he said, as he pulled out both claw shots. "Just a _tad_ too busy to keep up a running commentary right now."

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

"—too busy to keep up a running commentary right now," Link's voice came into Zelda's ear, and she frowned at the tone she was taking with him, even as she set the whispering stone aide. It was venting a series of grunting and clanking noises, ostensibly due to Link's efforts to descend the well shaft. She had no particular desire to listen to that.

Instead, Zelda went back to her inner thoughts. On one cycle, she kept track of Link's progress with an absent ear, just in case she was needed again. On another cycle, she'd been constructing a mental image of Link's relative location, mapping out his progress through space as he'd chronicled it. The three-dimensional model was quite a bit less defined that she would have liked, but the process of constructing it had been a profitable experience. Generating a spatial model from ambient sounds gave her _ideas_, ideas she developed and expanded upon in her mind's third cycle.

Careful not to loose track of her other two, Zelda devoted more energy to processing her third cycle, bringing up her photo-memory of the book of secret royal family magic she'd pulled from the castle's vaults when audience day had taken her to the construction site. Among the many incantations and enchantments recorded there was included the spell that had generated the whispering stone. She felt she had a decent grasp of the changes she wanted to enact, and she began to intuitively work through a spell construction to reach that goal.

The task turned out to be a bit more involved than she'd imagined, and she reluctantly dropped the process of analyzing echoes and ambiance in Link's transmission and relegated her model of Monseille Keep to her memory. With the concentration she'd freed up, she began to demolish the problem of constructing a new spell from two different angles, and eventually managed to piece something together. She couldn't be _certain_ it would work, but from everything she knew about enchanting, it should certainly do something like what she wanted.

The small part of Zelda's mind still tracking Link noted that the noises around him were gaining a deeper echo and that the sound of moving water was growing more distinct. Satisfied that he was making progress down the well, Zelda tuned him out completely for a moment and concentrated every bit of her mind on the spell she wanted to cast.

Moving quickly and with a graceful precision, Zelda pulled a sheet of square parchment from a stack in her desk drawer and set it on her drafting podium. When the paper was secured, she took a filled fountain pen in each hand. Using a mental discipline she'd been perfecting for weeks, Zelda put control of each hand into a different 'cycle' inside her head, and then used the third one to coordinate. Almost without hesitation, each pen set to a different corner of the paper and began independently drawing parts of the same picture.

It was utterly uncanny, and any human to witness the bizarre sight would probably have gone cross-eyed. The process was very much like one left handed artist and one right handed artist were crowded around the writing table, going at the paper at the same time. And yet, this description totally failed when one came to comprehend the perfect coordination between the two pens at the task of generating one cohesive image. The pens moved with machine-precision, ruler-straight and compass-curved lines joining at protractor-precise angles under the dual ministrations. With double the pens, Zelda completed her complex, radial rune pattern in half the time.

"Link, I'm going to try something," Zelda said, as she put aside her pens and rubbed at her eyes. Every time she did that, her eyes wanted to point in different directions in sympathy with her divided attentions. Needless to say, that was not at all a comfortable sensation. "I'll be out of contact for about two minutes. If this works, I'll be able to have a visual feed through the whispering stone. If it doesn't… well… I'm _rather_ sure I'll be able to contact you again, either way."

"Fine," Link huffed, apparently strained by whatever athletics it took to shimmy down a well without a stitch of support from either above or below. He didn't mention the folly of trying fantastic experiments on their communications equipment in the middle of a crisis situation, but Zelda felt his tacit disapproval come across anyway. With the unadulterated joy of discovery behind her, his disagreement didn't even slow her down.

As she'd informed him of her plans, she'd moved the pattern over to her sand-tray for a quick-dry job. Now she dumped the excess sand from the dry ink and set the completed pattern flat down on some clear desk-space. Zelda then deactivated the whispering stone with a touch and quickly moved to release the cord it hung on and set it down on the center of her new, original spell pattern. Finally, with a slow sigh that kicked up clouds of stray sand, she placed her hands on either side of the spell pattern.

The words Zelda began to chant were not so much words as sounds. That was because, with the possible exception of invoking divine intervention, generating magical effects didn't really involve words, at least not in the traditional sense. 'Magic words' were a crutch for the weak minded; hedge-wizards and amateur enchanting enthusiasts made great trade in bad poetry to play to that silly misconception. Sorcerers like Gannon and, to a much lesser extent, Zelda herself, knew that most magic happened in the mind, and the way to let it out, when it was necessary at all, was to use Thurgis.

Zelda's chanting quickly reached a crescendo, the nonsense syllables of the Thurgis 'language' matching the necessary cadence and syllable count to give life to the magical patterns in her mind's eye and retraced onto the paper between her hands. In a matter of moments, the whispering stone's ancient enchantment had been reopened, and the pattern below it started to glow. A few moments more and that pattern was added to the innumerable variety inside the stones 'magical space' already, and the glow peaked. Finally, Zelda finished adding in the 'bells and whistles,' including the links that would incorporate this enchantment into the whole, a defined process for activating the new features, and the completion spell to seal it all back up again.

When she finished the quiet spell, Zelda was sweating more profusely than at any part of her spar with Ashei. The energy that reshaped the fabric of the meta-reality where magic resided came directly from the body, with the exchange rate determined by one's innate magical power. A gods-enhanced sorcerer like Gannon could reshape reality as easily as breathing, but Zelda's enhancement didn't improve on the innate power she'd been granted through her bloodline.

What _her_ Triforce had done was allow her to hold enough magical patterns in her mind to accentuate work that had required ten enchanters to concentrate simultaneously in some bygone era. Gannon had been a terror capable of rending apart the fabric of space at will, reshaping himself and the world to suit his sadistic whims. Still, she took satisfaction from the thought that he'd never have equaled this intricacy without assistance.

Body taut with anticipation, Zelda reactivated the whispering stone. At first it merely rang for Link's attention, no connection forming until he responded. Deciding not to wait, Zelda overrode that wait with a touch, and then touched it again in the way she'd defined to activate its newest feature. The stone flared, and then obediently projected an image into the air above it on her desk. At first it was not unlike the crude projection that produced written messages, but then it gained depth and definition in mid-air. In seconds, Zelda was looking at a third-person image of a vertical shaft, a man-shape in its center.

"Link, can you hear me?" Zelda asked, as she marveled at what she'd wrought. It wasn't exactly what she'd intended, but it was also more than she'd hoped for. The translucent image held no fine details, but the soft pink light that formed its substance provided all the clarity of a tiny, faceless doll navigating an ever-changing, transparent dollhouse. "Because, I can see you."

"Oh? Well, Your Majesty, that's wonderful. Congratulations. Whoa!" Zelda watched as Link's model slipped several feet down the shaft, and her heart skipped a beat. When it threw up an arm and shot an extension of some kind into the near wall, then sling-shotted toward the point it hit, she switched to goggling in wonder.

"Goodness, but I'm seeing quite a lot," Zelda mumbled.

"Yeah? Can you see how far I have left to go? It's black as ink down here. I have the goddesses to thank that part of the well shaft is just exposed soil and roots, and that my clawshot seems to like it. Still, it'd be nice to have some clue where I'm going, and I don't fancy dropping my lamp into an unknown element of 'pit.'"

"Claw-what?" Zelda asked, enchanted.

"Focus, Princess, please?" Link wasn't quite begging, but it was a close distinction.

"Oh, yes!" Zelda shook her curiosity off with an effort and examined the boundaries of her model again. It wasn't using light to gather the information that constructed the image, otherwise it wouldn't work in the dark Link had described. There wasn't enough magic in the amulet for it to be a construction of pure otherworldly energy either. That left… _of course_. "Link, if you could just shout downward, or otherwise generate some loud noise, I think I really _can_ tell you what's down there."

"What now?" His incredulity was understandable, considering that he was on the run.

"Focus, Link, please?" Zelda half-mocked him. He made a half-amused grunt in return, and her image showed the little figure banging around blindly at the wall of the shaft in front of where he hung. A moment more, and a cracking sound announced that he'd dislodged a bit of stone, which Zelda got to watch drop down the shaft, clattering all the way.

"Ooh," Zelda couldn't help but marvel at her new toy as she watched it work. Each time the rock struck a side of the well shaft, a ripple appeared on her translucent model. Everywhere that ripple went, more of the environment was revealed in the air above her desk. In seconds the rock dropped into a void, and then that void became an arched hallway in an instant as the stone crashed into the nearby moving water with a terrific, echoing _sploosh_.

"Well, Link, using your height as a ruler," Zelda began, her voice beaming, "your toes are about ten feet from the bottom of the well shaft. It empties directly into a quickly moving river, so you'll want to be careful when you feel the space open up beneath you at the shaft's end. At that point, there's still seven feet to the ground, so be careful when you've got that first ten above you. It looks… it looks as though someone put some netting or something between the river and the bottom of the well though, so you should be alright."

"Hah!" Link exclaimed, "I guess that makes _this_ the quickest way down!"

Before Zelda could protest, Link released whatever allowed him to cling to the wall, and he fell rapidly down the shaft. Zelda was choking on her pulse as she thrilled with terror, her eyes riveted to the image. His arms and legs thrust out to control the fall, but he was still moving fast when he cleared the shaft and free-fell toward the river. His little model leaned back when it hit the open space, and landed on the netting with little more than an audible grunt.

"Well, what do you know?" Link shouted, without a trace of relief in his voice. "Blind faith in the Monarchy really _does_ work!" As he shouted, the cramped hallway he was now occupying gained distinction and the reaching shaft above him faded away.

"Link!" Zelda snapped at him, angry and more than relieved enough for the both of them, "I said I _thought_ there _might_ be netting there! You could have just plunged to your death!"

"So what?" Link grumbled as he rolled off the net and onto the narrow walkway. There were some mechanical sounds that Zelda identified as him lighting his lamp. "I _didn't_. I don't know what voodoo you're using, but I figured, since it was _you_, it'd probably work. How the heck did you do that, anyway?"

"I'm seeing with sound," Zelda snapped, "And stop trying to distract me! You didn't even hesitate! That's not _normal_, Link!"

"When was the last time anything about this struck you as 'normal,' Princess?" Link asked, his deadpan tone still giving the question quite a bit of zing. "Hesitation is for second-guessing and wracked nerves. I don't do the latter anymore, and the former is more _your_ department."

"And just what is _that_ supposed to mean?" Zelda couldn't help herself, she was quibbling with him openly now. Her sense of regal propriety and absolute authority never seemed to last when she was dealing with this particular agent.

"It means I'm your man of action," Link told her outright as he made his way down the cistern passageway. The angle of the netting suggested that whoever had been using this route came from that direction, and she was impressed that Link didn't need her help to figure that one out. "The whole reason I'm out here is to get things done. I go with my gut and I don't let little things like mortal danger and an over-cautious attitude stand in the way."

"Are you even _listening_ to yourself?" Zelda asked.

"Of course I'm—" Link paused. "Wait, what was I saying?"

"Something _stupid_," Zelda informed him. "Have you been feeling okay Link?" Something zinged in Zelda's mind, her intuition going off like a small bomb. "This has to do with your Triforce, doesn't it? You understand that there's a point where courage and bravado cross a line into recklessness and stupidity, right?"

"Yes! Yes, I know," Link sounded embarrassed to be caught out like that. After all, he was supposed to be her moral compass, not her his common sense. "Things have been getting a little weird since… lately. But, I've got it under control."

"You call jumping into uncertain death, 'under control?'" Zelda asked, pointedly. A part of her knew she was overreacting, but a louder part of her was terrified of what might have occurred if she'd been wrong. Life and death balancing on your words was something she was still having trouble dealing with, even in the _abstract_.

"Hey, I managed to suppress the urge to track down Orlouge and the other urge to mix it up with those castle guards." Link slowed as he began to run out of cistern path. A blank wall raised in front of him, the maintenance path cut off by a sturdy stone wall that had probably been installed to cut off the path to the castle back when the well was removed. This whole area was walled off, with only rushing water and a brisk draft able to pass through. "Two out of three ain't bad."

"It looks like there's a door hidden over on your left," Zelda grudgingly advised as she considered his words. Was this the price Link was paying for whatever all he was getting from the Triforce? Much like the burgeoning acuity of her mind, which she had to tend constantly to avoid migraines that could prostrate her, Link's enhancements looked to be a sword cutting both ways. He did unbelievably courageous things without batting an eye, but then he turned around and had to talk himself down from doing the courageous thing when it happened to also be the wrong thing, or even merely the stupid thing.

"Hey, I see it." Link's avatar met with the doorway in Zelda's image. He proceeded to examine it more thoroughly than she would have expected. "But hell, what's up with this thing? It looks like someone knocked the bricks out of the wall and dug into the soil behind it. Or… maybe they dug _in_? Who would excavate a tunnel _into_ the cisterns? Wouldn't that take some kind of long damn time?"

"Probably anywhere from a few months to a year, depending on manpower, equipment, and where they started digging from," Zelda made the calculation without even thinking about it, "besides, it's almost certainly just a tunnel from one of the other cistern passages to this closed off one. Anyway, it seems to just be a narrow hall on the other side."

There was a busting sound as Link booted in the door, the noise and vibration lighting up the hall in Zelda's picture like a lighting flash in the night. It was enough to reveal a larger room between Link's location and the next, and much of that room's contents in fuzzy, indistinct relief.

"Link, you've got company!" Zelda said, as she identified the man-shaped things now turning toward the noise he'd made. "There are a lot, and they're _big_. Long arms and legs, probably not human."

"Trolls," Link said, with confidence.

"Really?" Zelda flared with curiosity again, her mind referencing everything she'd ever read about trolls. In an instant she'd recalled a sketch of one in a comparative humanoid anatomy textbook she'd paged through. "So what are they like? Do they really have tusks instead of molars?"

"Busy now!" Link snapped in a harsh whisper. Her image of him had drawn a sword and now sat crouched behind its shield. The door at the end of the rough-dug hallway he'd entered busted open to reveal a much more distinct humanoid shape, and Zelda inhaled sharply as she watched Link lunge. The first troll to investigate the noise was hit low in the chest by a shield with a full-bore sprint behind it. It was punted back into a gaggle of its half-prepared allies, and then Link went to work.

A part of Zelda was suddenly glad that her image was limited to basic, featureless outlines. Although it did leave the job of matching wet, bloody sounds to the sterile carnage in the hands of her imagination, it was still better for her digestion than watching first-hand. This here was quite a bit of carnage; Link hit the large room like a hammer, and then exploded into swordplay like a bomb.

He opened by cleaving one's head in twain, then spun and clipped a huge slice off of another one's skull. Turning again, he dodged low under a hastily-interposed shield and ran the next one through, lodging his sword firmly in its chest. One troll took the opportunity to spring at his back, but he ducked under its leap, grabbing its sword arm on the way, then twisted and ran that one through the heart from behind with its own sword while it was still half-clutched in its broken hand.

He scrambled to retrieve his sword from his previous victim's limp torso and managed to get it back just in time to duck under a spear-thrust. He twirled inside of the spear-troll's effective range and hamstrung it, ducked under a spear-butt sweep that would have dislocated his jaw, and then clipped its skull with his shield. It staggered back, and he ran it through the heart. He jerked his sword free again, and the first troll he'd knocked over was finally back on its feet.

The troll and Link stood off from one another, each with sword and shield drawn. From her image, this last troll looked bigger, better armored, and more relaxed than the others, despite the way Link had caught it off guard at first. The grunting sounds still coming over the whispering stone were replaced by a coherent growl, and it didn't take Zelda but a moment to recognize even this broken dialect of Ghentese.

"Mah, but we dinnin' 'spect to see any of ya 'umans so soon! I be apalagizin' for da bahm, dinnah-mahn," The troll said, referring to Link. "Ya must be pretta mad abaut da Prince-mahn goin' boom, but ya want be tellin' a soul abaut what ya seen 'ere!"

In another flash of insight that was like a slingshot pellet ricocheting inside of her skull, Zelda connected quite a few dots, her eyes straining in their sockets as she tried to absorb the true extent of the Duke's treachery. The Trolls. He'd allied himself with the murderous, man-eating trolls. The theory explained nearly as many questions as it generated. Instead of worrying about those, she dedicated one part of her mind to forming and filing them for later consideration, and then focused on the battle.

"That troll just claimed responsibility for planting the keep bomb," Zelda informed Link.

"Understood." Link said.

Link rushed the Troll before it could wonder where Zelda's voice had come from. It parried his first thrust, and then immediately tried to toss him back with its superior height and weight. Link stood his ground and threatened its midsection with his sword, stalling its advance, and then struck for its throat. It parried again, but it was off balance. Link reversed momentum and tried to open its chest with a slash while inside its guard, but his strike generated a squeal of metallic protest and not the slightest sound of troll agony. Apparently it was _quite a_ _bit_ better armored than the others.

Link backed off to reconsider an opponent that had stood against his rush, and Zelda watched in silence, completely riveted by the display of swordsmanship and lethal competition. The troll was not quite Link's match for speed or skill, but it was big, and knew just how to use that. In any case, the charged ambiance of the life-or-death duel was utterly unlike anything she'd ever witnessed, and a part of her that was still merely human drank in that tension with abandon. It was the kind of horrifying excitement that made combat- and blood-sports a cross-cultural staple of human society.

Link and the troll came together in a sudden clash of steel and too-quick-to-follow maneuvering, and Zelda gasped. Then there was knock at her door, and she cursed blackly as she recovered from being startled to near heart-failure. She deactivated the stone and slipped it unceremoniously into a desk-drawer, and then stapled an amicable smile over her distress and annoyance and got her voice under control.

"Enter," Zelda said, and was proud to make it sound indifferent despite all those emotions wrestling in her chest. The door opened, and there he was.

"Ah, Lady Zelda, if I might have a moment of your time?" said the young Reanalds Jr.

Zelda was positive there had never been a time when it was harder to keep boiling, murderous anger off of her face. Like a mantra, she repeated the first few paragraphs of the Hylian Codex of Common Law to herself until she felt that she could speak without screaming.

"_Remember, Zelda_," She cautioned herself in a dark humor, "_you can't have him summarily executed, it just wouldn't _look_ good. Besides, assassination has so many fewer repercussions, other than the moral ones. And everyone knows those don't count, right_?"

**Monseille Cisterns, The Principality of Ghent**

Link stood off from his opponent and felt the combat-high wash his brain in cold, uncompromising exhilaration. This big troll had successfully warded off two rushes that would have instantly killed or crippled the average opponent, and a switch in his brain flipped from 'execution' to 'attrition.' With an opponent skilled enough to elude immediately fatal blows, he would have to instead pick the big bastard apart, one little bit at a time. That process became a bit more interesting when you factored in things like the superior troll reach, troll regeneration, and troll stamina.

The troll bellowed something in some language or another that Link couldn't understand, big surprise there. Still, it got him cautious, because his opponent didn't seem to be addressing him this time. Link cursed brutally in his mind—he didn't want to have this guy on his feet when reinforcements showed up. That was obviously the troll's plan now: stay defensive until help arrives.

With the initiative in his corner, Link struck again, coming in with a feint that emulated his last two death-blow attempts. The troll bit hard on that bait, and his sword was up to parry a thrust that would have impaled his skull up through his chin. Instead, Link jerked down and away along the inside curve of the creature's sword-arm. Sparks flew from the heavy linked-scales of its fine steel armor, but then Link's sword found the chink between its spaulder and the steel armbands protecting its biceps. His blade bit, and he twisted the hilt in a way that dug a half-pound of meat out of his opponent's flesh.

The troll bellowed in pain, and now Link pressed his advantage, sweeping his sword down and inside his opponent's lower guard. The troll tried to counter with a downward-crushing shield-slam, but Link anticipated, and deflected with his own shield, even as he kept a cautious eye on that gleaming scimitar where pain had sent it flailing aside. His blade skittered along the scales of the troll's breastplate again, and this time found a chink between the belt and plate as the troll twisted for balance. Even with all force he could muster behind the slash, the chain shirt under the scale-mail prevented all but a shallow gash just above the hips. Still, that was enough to sting his opponent again.

Link ducked and dodged to keep his head in the face of the counter-attack, and this time tried to stab for the light armor around the inside of the legs. He spotted an opportunity to hamstring, but barely got in a minor gash before a three-fingered fist slammed into the small of his back. Link heaved for air, spin-slashing ineffectually against armor and shield to drive the troll back as he reeled from that blow. The troll was doing an admirable job of not dying, and now Link could hear reinforcements just seconds away.

Although their footwork never stopped, and they orbited irregularly as they jockeyed for an advantageous angle, Link eyed his opponent like they were both stock still. He could taste the troll's caution—it had never faced a human opponent that could move like Link, or strike nearly as hard. At the same time, it was stubbornly enthusiastic about its chances, what with reinforcements approaching, and Link couldn't really disagree with that sentiment. For Link, it was now or never.

Link feinted for the legs this time, and the Troll read the maneuver easily, stepping into the motion to punish him with a counterattack. Then Link committed, diving through the Troll's open legs in a sudden spring that took him right under its strike, and then right under its entire body. He planted his shield in the dirt and sprang up with a twist, stabbing into the softer back armor and up through the torso toward the heart. The thrust went true and strong, but by some devil-spawned instinct, the troll twisted to the side, wasting the strike's penetration on its ribs in grisly exchange for its life. The troll collapsed with Link's sword still in its chest, and now time was up.

Reinforcements poured into the room at a run, the first few rushing him as the rest blindly followed into the open area. Cursing violently and out loud, Link ducked under a spear-thrust and jerked back on his sword. He turned quickly and ran a sword-wielding troll through the heart, then sliced through its body as he slipped past it and into the far hallway of the cave-room. The motion squeezed him past a handful of trolls that had pushed into the room without looking, and were now caught trying to turn around in the limited space with their friend's body falling all over them. On his way, Link drew, lit, and dropped a bomb in the narrow space, silently praying that he wasn't entombing himself in the process.

The next room he ran into was about as poorly lit as the rest, and there were five more trolls strapping on equipment in a furious rush. Link didn't even break stride as he clove a hunk out of the nearest one's skull, then bounced over to the next to stab it through the throat and up out the back of its head. The bomb went off behind him, and a cloud of debris blasted up in his wake, staggering the other trolls and allowing him to dash past them. He had a choice between left and right for his next blind, headlong sprint, and he followed his gut to the right.

The hallway was long and not even slightly lit, dug out of the bare earth just like the rest of these troll-made access paths. By the wavering light of his lamp, Link could just make out enough of the path ahead to keep from falling on his face or clipping a support beam, but not much else. That was the main reason why he almost face-planted into the tunnels sudden dead end.

"Oh damn!" Link didn't have the breath for a more colorful curse, although the situation certainly called for it. "Princess, any more magic you could pull out of your bag of tricks for me? Princess? Oh, Goddess _damnit_!" Link realized the whispering stone was no longer active, even as he spotted a lamp glow of his pursuers coming in from a ways down the hall.

Exactly as he'd suspected, the ones he hadn't bothered to kill had been joined by further reinforcements. Fortunately, the hall was only wide enough for a single-file advance. Unfortunately, they had those modified tunnel-spears, and single file wouldn't save him from being ganged up on in quarters too tight to swing a sword properly. Killing his way through the numbers they'd likely bring, especially now that they had his measure and were properly cautious, was going to be a huge pain in the ass. Still, with no other way out, Link stepped back and leaned against the bricks of the dead end wall, gathering his wits for a running start.

"Wait a minute!" Link stepped away from the dead end again and resisted the urge to kick himself. It was the same bricks as the cistern walls. As if that weren't enough, he could feel a very slight draft filtering through the eroded stones. A possible cave-in was preferable to fighting his way though however many trolls were camped down here, and he didn't hesitate to deploy another explosive, even as he charged away from it shield-first.

Link hit the advancing gauntlet of spear-tips and battered aside as many as he could, taking a painful scrape across his leg and another along his ribcage as the forged-steel tips proved their worth against his second-hand armor. He wound up nose-to-tusks with a sword-wielding troll whose breath smelled strongly of an open sewer. The entire press of trolls, some four or five in all, seemed utterly staggered by his ferocious charge, and Link managed to dig in under the guard of the lead troll. He'd pinned it to its allies with his shield, and it was trapped. It was messy, bloody work, but he managed to gut his sword up into the troll's heart. He'd just finished carving when the bomb went off behind him, and the floor bucked, but they were all too busy in a contest of strength and balance to be unnerved by the rumbling.

The press of trolls weighed against Link unbearably as they finally coordinated their shoving, and the dead troll's effusing blood had shot his footing to hell. In other words, it was time to withdraw. The troll immediately behind the one he'd gutted snapped its tusks at Link's head, trying to crack his skull open with its teeth. Link just about finished getting his sword free, and released the hilt just long enough to grab that troll by its tusk and whip its head against the nearby tunnel support beam. Then Link nabbed his sword hilt and pulled away, the obstruction provided by the dead and unconscious troll giving him room to retreat before the others could trample them and pursue.

Link turned at the last moment and prepared to engage the final three at the mouth of the new passage he'd made. The first troll rushed up with sword low for a stab, and Link was ready for it.

**Monseille Keep, The Principality of Ghent**

"He's _still_ _alive_?" The Duke bellowed, and realized only afterward how that might sound. He altered his tone slightly and nixed the manic fringe that had crept in. "I can hardly believe it—truly this is a miracle from the Goddess!" He covered his ass, even as his mind chanted "_how, how, how_?" in a near-crazed fury. He'd been expecting good news when they finally finished digging out the rubble, not this nightmare.

"Sir!" the Sergeant Lieutenant from the Prince's Guard saluted and kept his expression blank in the face of his Lord's outburst. "Guard Captain Alphonse was between His Majesty and the source of the explosion. Turns out, the paranoid bastard—err, the Captain—was wearing concealed armor plates beneath his vest. The back plates were not enough to stop the shrapnel from killing him, but his body and the front plates kept it from harming His Majesty. Unfortunately, the concussion has shattered his ears and broken most of his bones, and he's lost a great deal of blood. Our medics and surgeons are doing what they can, but he is not expected to recover soon… if… if at all."

"A miracle indeed," Sebastein acknowledged the man's grave words with a half-slight. He reigned in his surprise and anger, keeping his face a mask of bemused shock. Leave it to that fanatic Alphonse to shield the Prince from death by blind chance. First the mercenary slips away, then this! Goddess, what was the point of laying careful, meticulously researched plans if dumb luck and unpredictable people were going to trample all over them? Still, Philip was as good as dead, with or without a demon's luck.

"What is our progress on capturing the assassin?" The Duke asked.

"We've finished canvassing the keep and the grounds enclosed by the inner curtain wall," the young, commoner officer answered, "we can only conclude that he somehow managed to slip past our cordons and into the city after the initial sighting at the Princess's bedchamber."

"Ah, yes, the Princess, what of our sapphire?" The Duke was just taunting the poor man now. None but the Prince's very inner circle and those guards that protected their privacy had known anything of the royal abduction. Every other blue-sash had been fed that cock-and-bull story about illness to mitigate the obvious fact that she wasn't around anymore. To support that transparent cover-up, the Prince's people had circulated a rumor that the Princess had been secreted away in the country and was being treated for something far more embarrassing than a mere illness, although it was left specifically vague to augment credibility with speculation. Now, every soldier thought he was in the 'know,' and that kept curiosity distracted, at least temporarily. It also made this particular question doubly embarrassing.

"Well, yes, there was certainly no trace of her in the bedchambers…" the career soldier fidgeted, "but there's strong evidence to say that the official line of her being sequestered during grave illness isn't quite accurate, so we've little to worry about on that account. I've reason to believe she's quite safe, miles away from here."

"Oh? Well, that's certainly a relief!" the Duke lied confidently now that he was back in the realm of schemes that had succeeded. "At least the rightful succession is secure, should the worst befall my brother, Mother Goddess forbid." Of course, he'd personally see that Philip didn't survive the month, should it look like he would actually make it. A little bit of poison, properly applied, should string him along unconscious until a convenient moment for him to pass away in great style. In the meantime, him unconscious was the same as him dead, as far as the Duke's emergency authority was concerned.

"My Lord!" a messenger walked up to the officer conference, "the order to cordon and lock-down has gone out to every gate on the outer wall. We must expect some delays—many commanders will need explanations before they begin to shut refugees out of the city—but we should have an air-tight perimeter within the hour. The intruder's description is even now being distributed and the city's militia reserve has been mobilized to help with the door-to-door search."

"Very good, carry on." The Duke smiled, certain that he'd have his scapegoat yet. "I am going to go see to the—"

"My lord, I'm sorry to interrupt," one of the high-ranking keep staff members approached and caught him, "but Her Highness the royal consort has been raving to speak with you. Her condition has been fragile since… since the Princess became… ill… but this attack on the Prince has sent her into hysterics! You simply must agree to see her!"

"Yes, of course," Sebastein suppressed his sly grin as this part of the script played itself out to a 'T.' "If you would be so kind as to contact the royal doctor and have him accompany me? She must be attended to by an expert."

"Ah, yes, about that," the servant hesitated, "the royal doctor is missing. We haven't been able to locate him since the explosion."

"I see," Sebastein said, and he did. Being folded in half and tucked into a trunk could make a corpse very hard to find indeed. "In that case, contact my personal doctor at my estate near the barracks and have _him_ meet me. We must see Her Majesty properly attended."

"_Indeed, we must_," the Duke added, in his own mind. He would see that her majesty was denounced as a madwoman and kept so thoroughly drugged that she'd never have a chance to tell anyone a story different than his. She was supposed to die of 'grief,' also known as poison, when the Prince died and her daughter was lost without hope of return. That, at least, wouldn't be hard to adjust for the evolving circumstances.

**Monseille Cisterns, The Principality of Ghent: After Link Encounters Monica **

With the Trolls dead, the passage to their laid under the city sealed off with a cave in, and the danger of drowning reduced to a danger of getting a rash from his wet clothes, Link made his way out of the cisterns, as solemn as he'd ever been.

Link carried Monica on his back and tried not to think about the heavy overtones of fate that were once again starting to creep into his life. The Goddesses might well have more they intended of him, but at least this time they were being a bit more subtle about it all. He couldn't stand the idea that they were steering his life around again, but he was starting to really appreciate all the little things that kept coming out miraculously in his favor. A moment later, he remembered the way the power that had been forced upon him by 'divine favor' had ripped him from everyone he loved and any shot at a life of peace with them, and began to chew on his tongue as punishment for thinking that, even briefly. His prejudice against fate made it easy to gloss over the way the Goddesses had also given him the power to protect his loved ones from unspeakable disaster.

The little girl on his back pointed to a side-passage with a breeze of fresh air blowing down through it, and Link remembered to count her on his list of 'possibly divine coincidences' several times. He'd have been totally lost down here without the spunky little sprout, and probably drowned besides. As it was, they were both chilled to the bone and completely soaked through, and Link had rarely known a finer moment than when he stepped out into the midday sunlight and fresh air.

He didn't have more than a moment to enjoy the serenity of this out-of-the-way lot before he was mobbed by noisy children. It was bewildering experience, standing in the middle of the cacophonous storm that seemed to wiggle out of the thin air of the wide-open, cleared space between the city wall and the first buildings. For one thing, he couldn't understand a word they were saying, but beyond that, their interest in him seemed explosive and inordinate. It wasn't until he noticed that they were all talking to Monica that he realized they must have been waiting here for her.

There was a small tug at Link's shoulder, and he glanced back to find Monica in mixed spirits, but clearly wanting down. He lowered her into the gaggle of her peers, and as he did, he noticed something shiny all over his hands. He patted out his gloves until the little flakes of gold rained down on the ground in front of him, and all the talking stopped suddenly.

Link noticed the sudden silence and traced every little eye in the circle to the pile of gold shavings he'd just shed. Go figure—he'd come up drenched and caked with blood and muck, and they focus on the shiny bits. Whatever it meant to them, they scrambled to pick up each and every bit and, contrary to everything Link knew about children, reverently presented the scraps to Monica. The little girl looked about ready to cry, and the Ghentese chattering went on quickly.

Two boys came up to flank Monica, and Link figured he'd spotted Robin and Brenton purely by their resemblance to their cousin and to their parents. Seeing the three of them together reminded him of their parents much more directly, and he was instantly reminded of the danger they were in. While it was a promising sign, the fact that the kids were out playing didn't necessarily mean that the parents weren't already 'silenced.' Haste was now paramount—he still had quite some time before the average rank-and-file guards out here would be on the look out for anyone, and he needed to capitalize on the opportunity to slip away.

With his brain finally returning from its abbreviated vacation in post-traumatic-stress land, Link searched through his pockets until he found a bit of charcoal he used to take notes on handy surfaces while in dungeons. The messages he left behind ranged from reference markers for his map navigation to 'Link was Here,' every now and then, just to confound future adventurers. Now he turned the greasy bit of wood to the ground and etched out a little design from memory.

"Hey, Monica!" Link caught her attention away from her animated storytelling, her energy having returned twofold now that that golden slag was in her possession and she remembered that she'd just experienced a genuine life-or-death adventure... _again_. When she came over, he pointed down at the image, a crude depiction of the sign from the Maiden's Kiss Inn, and gave her a grave expression. "I need to get back to the inn as soon as possible. Do you understand?"

Monica and her cousins discussed what he might be saying for a few moments, and then came to a consensus. In no time, Link was following the three as they scrambled into the city, and the rest of the children, sensing an air of enormous urgency and excitement, followed quickly on their heels.

**Office of the Monseille Guard Gates and Walls Division, The Principality of Ghent**

"My Lord!" a messenger stamped in and held out a scrap of parchment with a red wax seal. "A missive from your wife. The courier strained its utmost urgency."

Martin nodded and took the message, sitting up and away from the registers, missives, and memos spread across his desk. He set aside the magnifying glass that helped him deal with finer print and prepared to break the seal and read the message. His wife, being as much a co-conspirator as his most trusted confidante, took precedence over any of the paper-drudgery these peaceful times condemned him to.

The messenger left, and just before he could start to scan the letter, another entered, interrupting him. It was Corporal Terrence, out of armor and changed into the casual blue-and-gray uniform of a non-commissioned commoner officer. Martin set aside the letter without thinking and stood to greet his most trusted subordinate and old family friend. The only reason he could be here, now, would be to carry news of the operation in the castle.

"Ah, my friend, what news of the infiltration this morning? I take it the operation came off without a hitch?" Martin's open smile was met with a closed expression as Terrence walked in and eased into a chair without accepting his handshake. He looked terribly distracted, and Martin was instantly concerned. "My Goddess man, what's the matter?"

"I'm sorry," Terrence said, his face gone ashen. Martin couldn't conceive of what he was apologizing for, but the look of abject shame and near-desperation that was starting to surface was almost frightening. "I didn't want this to come out this way."

"What in the blazes are you talking about?"

"I told him you could be reasonable, that you're a smart man, but he wants every loose end tied, and he knows he can't control you." Terrence looked up and considered his friend and commanding officer with pained, forlorn eyes. "He already has me under his control, and that brings us to this moment."

"What-?" Martin began, and then gasped and choked on the words as a pain speared from his neck. The pain spread to an almost instant numbness, and he collapsed back into his chair, his jaw paralyzed. A small dart jutted from his throat, its virulent poison coursing through his veins.

"As I said, I'm sorry. He has my brother and his whole family. I couldn't refuse him." Terrence stood up and circled around the desk, standing over his friend's paralyzed body and looking down into his quickly defocusing eyes. "By the time you wake up, you'll have been quite thoroughly framed for abetting in the assassination of the Prince. Any trial you get will be a formality at best, you'll never have a chance to even plead your case. I just wish there was something I could do for your family. Men are already moving to manipulate the riot that will inevitably follow news of the Prince's death. If the riot doesn't lynch your wife, an assassin's blade will finish her off."

Martin wanted to do something, but he forgot. He could barely even comprehend the words the man standing over him was saying. He faded quickly, and blacked out. On the table, a letter lay open but unread and completely ignored by the traitor who even now was busy planting evidence.

"Beware!" the letter spoke, in a tight, neat script. Its coded phrases made little initial sense, but would have meant much to Martin. The final product wasn't exactly innocuous, but would sooner be discarded as nonsense than examined as a secret message, which was good enough.

"The Baker's brother has betrayed us all," the letter went on. "Monica's savior has shown me evidence that has convinced me, and you should realize much the same as events unfold there. The Baker's brother ruined the Baker's pastries and is blaming it on the neighbors. We have evidence otherwise, and so he's going to ruin our pastries too before we can make trouble. There is much more to say, but I'm getting our buns out of the oven before things get too hot. I know all our friends will be happy to help me, the family, and Monica's new friend get our sweetmeats to the table. I hope you get out of the kitchen and meet us at the table before things get too hot there. Love, Miranda."

Elsewhere, a cart full of children and two women rattled through the south gate at the height of traffic. With all the people clamoring to get into the city now that the troll scare had gotten around, one innocuous bunch trying to leave, who might have been going for a picnic as far as it seemed, was hardly given a second look. Busy guards willingly waved them on without questioning.

No one noticed the man-shaped lump in the blanket under the picnic basket, or bothered to check for the cart's hidden compartments, now stuffed with weaponry, traveling supplies, and cash money. That the cart was pulled by three horses was hardly normal, but not particularly noteworthy either. The beautiful Hylian mare leading the two pack-nags would have drawn the eye of an experienced rider, but none of the commoner soldiers at the gate were anything of the sort.

Five minutes later, the orders to cordon off the outer gates finally trickled through many layers of confusion and inquiry. Rumor lit the city of Monseille alight, and within an hour from that moment, the land was embroiled in nervous fear as word of the assassination swept from ear to ear. The violent, door-to-door searches and open intimidation of any known foreign elements would find many scapegoats, but would not find one genuine Hylian Agent. The only one in the city was long gone on his way elsewhere.

**Second Full Revision Note:**

It annoys me to no end that my decision to mix up the narrative arrangement with a few time leaps made it impossible to completely standardize scene change tags during this total story overhaul. I removed a bunch of the tags that were unique to this chapter and reduced them to the minimum stage directions necessary to make the time leaps clear, but it still annoys me. This is one case where short-term experimental writing definitely breaks up the cohesion of the overall work, since I don't do much of any back-and-forth time leaping anywhere else in the story. Oh well.

My favorite part of this chapter is the interplay between Link and Zelda. I entered this story without a personal commitment to any sort of romantic pairing at all. I figured I would write for a while and see how the pieces fell before deciding who to stick with whom. Then I had an idea for a late plot twist/reveal, and stepped back from romance altogether. Nevertheless, it's impossible to write Link/Zelda interactions without a certain amount of UST, so I didn't bother trying. The result is highly entertaining to me.

My least favorite part of this chapter was my experimentation with detailing a magic system for this story. Mostly this is because I was personally so uninspired by my own efforts that I promptly forgot that stuff was even in this story and failed to properly reference it later during further hoodoo performed by various characters. It also extends the chapter's length unnecessarily and generally drags the narrative pace down. The only upside was the chance to show what a mental badass Zelda was transforming into to continue that general theme of Triforce causing inhuman metamorphosis.


	9. Rescue the Princess

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 9: Rescue the Princess**

**A Lonesome Prison, The Southern Swamp**

Jeanette looked up at her captor though the fire-hardened wood of her prison cell and closed her face into the guarded expression she'd practiced over weeks in captivity. Like all the rest of their magic-users, known as witch doctors, this one wore _nothing_ but a long skirt of leather from flayed human and troll skin and a necklace of finger bones. On the male witch doctors, it was a gruesome and fetishistic display of the bloody counter-civilization the trolls thrived within. On the plentiful cadre of female witch doctors, it was a testament to indecency that Jeanette imagined was designed specifically to terrorize the sensibilities of properly raised young women.

"Wake ahp girlie," the troll witch growled in atrocious Ghentese. This troll was very female, and showed the telltale marks of her species' sexual dimorphism. Part of it was clearly humanoid—she had breasts that she, like all other witch doctors, wore bare at all times. Other than that, female trolls were shorter and had extremely human-looking bodies with slight, effeminate builds. Their tusks were smaller, barely pointed nubs jutting from the lips, and their limbs lacked much of the extra length and exaggerated bend of their men-folk. Their three thick fingers and bulky thumbs were much more delicate than a man's as well, but they had no more need for shoes than any male. This one's hair was done up in dozens of brilliant orange braids that spilled down her back, and by the variety of other hairstyles Jeanette had seen, theirs was a culture where hair was every bit as much an object of vanity as with humans.

At her address, Jeanette obediently drew herself off the palette of dry hay she used as a bed. It was the cell's only furnishing, but it was better than the floor of uneven rock. Unsurprisingly, the cannibalistic trolls treated their prisoners like livestock. That was better than many people treated prisoners, but it came with the caveat that you might wind up on the menu, or worse.

"Yah use 'as run out. You be leavin' 'ere and joinin' the regulah prisonahs." The explanation was more than her keepers generally offered, but then, this wasn't at all how things normally went. When the witch doctors spoke around her, it was usually in a droning chant of nonsense words, magic of some kind concentrated on her. They cycled through a few different casters as she languished here in solitary confinement, telling her nothing and feeding her only slightly more. This was her first indication that there _were_ any other prisoners.

If she'd been expecting the unusual bout of talkativeness to last, she was sorely disappointed. The bare-chested, grim-faced sorceress turned from the doors and stood by as a huge troll soldier with a dull, bored expression marched up and opened her cage. They didn't bother ordering her or making any effort to intimidate her; Jeanette was small for a human, and compared to a full-grown male troll, she was like a small child.

Jeanette Orlouge-D'Montaigne, heir apparent to the Principality of Ghent, was known far and wide as the Sapphire of Ghent. It was the blue eyes, so utterly rare outside of Hyrule, or the far northern nation of Gauhome, that had earned her that name. It was said that the rare trait was a gift from the foreign blood mixed into the royal tree over the years. Those uncommon eyes had combined with uncommon beauty, which in the face of her immaturity rendered her into a human doll in the eyes of most. Bedraggled as she now was, she was still doll-like in perfect appearance, but it was a doll that had seen some tough times.

There was grime caked into her hip-length black hair and in patches all over her skin. The flimsy nightdress she'd been captured in was still her only clothing, weeks later, and was very much worse for the wear. At this point the tattered, filthy rags barely covered her immature, developing body. She could only be thankful that the humid air didn't leave her to freeze, and that trolls had no interest in humans beyond the gastronomical. The average troll male looked at her like a cat watches a pigeon, with no suggestion of lust at all. In a way, it was a great deal worse.

Now, if she was going to be lumped in with other humans, people who'd been imprisoned here… and she wasn't royalty under these circumstances… and what were the chances trolls segregated their livestock by gender? She honestly didn't know, and that uncertainty made her hesitate when the troll slipped a noose around her neck and tugged for her to follow. He tugged harder, choking her, and she stumbled forward in her hurry to avoid harsher treatment. Only her last shred of dignity allowed Jeanette to suppress the whimpering and tears that threatened.

The room beyond her box cell was a line of similar cells, and she was quickly ushered out of there entirely and into the sunlight. She was immediately looking out over a stunning cityscape, as the two trolls led her by the leash, and she found herself totally reevaluating her mental image of savage, vicious, humanoid beasts.

For one thing, the prison was in the shadow of a huge stone temple, the single largest free-standing structure she'd ever even imagined, a pyramid of stacked square stone the source of which she couldn't begin to guess at. The nearest source of rock she could think of, if this were truly some place in the Southern Swamp, would be the branch of the Death Mountain range that separated Ordonia from Amafu and the other southwestern costal states. Transporting rock over the lush swampland was an unimaginable task, and then you had to keep them from sinking—it was an engineering feat that would have daunted the brightest minds in Ghent's many guilds. The stones also happened to look older than the walls of Monseille, which did little for her sense of cultural superiority.

All around the pyramid temple, a city of wooden lodges stretched out like the spokes of a wheel. The swampland was alive with the motion of this place's population, which had to number in the thousands, if not the ten thousands. Smoke rose from a distinct metalworking district, barges gathered in droves down by every waterfront of this swampland island, and the city itself was based on a distinct radial grid of streets and roads that suggested forward urban planning on an unbelievable scale. From the looks of things, the only real advantage humans could claim was a penchant for textiles and clothing materials more advanced than the flesh of slain enemies.

Jeanette's handlers were not in the mood for her sightseeing, and she was jerked along by her leash. They spoke genially in the rough trollish tongue, even joking and laughing, treating her like she wasn't even there. In a way, she could understand that the terror-inducing escalation of her nightmarish and certainly soon to be fatal imprisonment was just another day at work for these two, but she really couldn't help but hate them terribly for it. Hate was not a familiar feeling for her, and it was almost enough to distract her from the terror that threatened to empty her bladder.

Their journey eventually brought them to a block of cells on the far side of the temple. Half way there, the witch doctor had split to enter an archway over a stair leading down into the temple's bowels. The burly guard delivered her to another series of cells, only this one was in a much bigger room outside the temple, and seemed to have an exit in the back that led into the temple, too. Here there were no swirling runes painted in blood on every wall and floor, but there was a group of inmates in every cell, unlike her deserted former space. She was dragged to one cell, seemingly at random, and shoved inside without further comment.

Looking up from the floor, she recognized her cellmates in their ratty, tattered breeches and shirts. They were all rather burly men of varying degrees of wild scruffiness, and Jeanette held her breath as she watched a few of them stir from their mildly-starved dozing and take notice of her. There was a muttering among them, mostly exhaustion and what seemed to be a bit of bickering, and eventually one man stood up and came over toward her.

Jeanette found herself in competition between trying to cover up her tattered, mostly transparent night clothes with her arms and edging away from the sturdily built man approaching her in a none-too discreet manner. She was so preoccupied that when he suddenly tossed a blanket on her, the sudden thump of its weight drew a peep of shock out of her fear-stiffened throat.

"Relax, little one, my men and I won't be bothering a little girl, even despite these dire circumstances." The kind words, so softly spoken, were so unexpected that Jeanette slumped in surprise and slowly peered out over the tattered hide blanket. The man above her, despite being unwashed and unshaven, still looked very young and had a definite air of energetic kindness. It was all the more apparent for the way it competed with the harsh despair around his brown eyes. "That is not the way of Ghentese soldiers, certainly not when Sergeant Lieutenant Manuel D'tannan is still in command."

**Central White Plains Region, The Principality of Ghent**

Link eased Epona back to a walk and set aside the reigns. He was a day and a half out from the small trading post where he'd left the D'tannan family in the safe hands of some of Martin's most trusted compatriots, and was now only about a half a day's hard riding from the border of the Southern Swamp. 'South' as a lead from the Prince's investigation and the presence of trolls as the effectors for the kidnapping and bombing made the swamp the only logical place to search for Princess Jeanette. For anything more specific than that, the damn spirit focus would have to start working.

The ritual to transform the stuffed toy into a divining charm had been more magic than Link had ever wanted to be involved in, despite the fact that Zelda strenuously protested that it hadn't really been magic at all. He'd merely invoked the magic woven into the spirit focus planted on Jeanette through the link provided by the object she'd invested so much emotion into. Apparently it was impossible for someone who wasn't born with magical ability to ever generate a magical effect of his or her own, or at least that was what Zelda had reassured him with while he fumbled through the invoking ritual.

Now Link reached into Epona's burdened saddle bags and produced the stuffed toy, which was hung on a length of twine. He let it dangle, and it spun and oriented itself with an unnatural energy, the horn on the stuffed horse forming the pointing end of the divining device. So far, it had rotated in a wide southward arc without focusing on anything, a symptom of the interference from alien sorcery. So much was he expecting exactly the same that he almost didn't notice when it jerked to a dead-stiff stop, pointing steadily to the southwest.

"Well, about time!" Link muttered to himself. Now all he had to do was avoid troll raiding parties, enter a swamp no horse could hope to navigate, infiltrate whatever location the princess was being held at, and then reverse the process with a fourteen-year-old girl lacking any sort of training or experience on his back. Oh yeah, and there were those sorcerers to worry about, too.

With a huff and a sigh, Link loosened his tight shoulders and urged Epona on. Hard riding would have him into the swamp before the nightfall, and he could hide out and work his way in on the coming morning. Goddesses willing, guided by this be-spelled toy, he'd be able to get through an enemy territory widely renowned for being a deathtrap from which none returned.

**Prison of the Pyramid, The Southern Swamp**

"Come, come, small one, there are enough things to be afraid of here without cowering from us." Manuel's enticement somehow managed to retain some glimmer of humor, but Jeanette just couldn't let her terrified guard down that easily. She continued to look out from under the tatty animal hide with huge, frightened eyes.

"Oh, now honestly, that's enough of that. My wife would have my head if she heard I was going around frightening little girls only a few years older than my own daughter." The idea that the young man before her could have a child anywhere near her own age was so startling to Jeanette that she actually forgot her fear for a moment. Once it was slightly stalled, it quickly began to drain away as she noted the utter lack of threat from the dirty, exhausted survivors in this cell. Along with Manuel's kindly nature, it was quite eye-opening.

"There, now, that's better. So, do you have a name, peach, or will I have to keep thinking of new diminutive nicknames? I don't have a problem with that, but I could imagine it would get pretty annoying for you."

Jeanette coughed out a giggle, and then realized what she'd done and tried to clamp down retroactively. The effort failed, and she sighed and finally relaxed once and for all. The relief from her fear was almost enough to make her cry, but she'd expended all her tears in the dark, solitary nights when she felt no one was within earshot. Her despair had grown too complete to call for tears anymore, and she saw that same dead resignation in the slumped bodies and blank stares exhibited by all of her new cellmates.

"My name is Jean—" she cut herself off with a cough, realizing that it might not be the best to reveal herself. "Jeannie. My name is Jeannie. Do you know what they're going to do with us?"

The last was something of a shot in the dark to distract them from her hesitance. Of course, she had no real illusions about what would happen. Although her education had included enough military history and political science to understand how all of her nation's enemies dealt with prisoners, she retained very little of those complex lessons. Indeed, she had been the despair of her tutors for years now. That was not enough to actually protect her with ignorance, though. All she really needed to know were the bedtime horror stories beloved by nursemaids for naughty children. Trolls ate their prisoners. They cut their throats, drained the blood, skinned them for human-leather, and then butchered the carcass for the meat.

"Ehh," Manuel struggled for words, "best not to think of that. We've some time left still, they haven't been taking prisoners out toward the slaughter-houses for a while now." There was a dramatic, blood-curdling scream from deep down in the temple, echoing up through the back door that lead into its depths. Manuel cringed, as did everyone else, some moaning or shuddering. "I suppose _that's_ what we should be worrying about. They've been taking us into the temple instead. Those screams… they come every hour, on the hour. It is difficult to stand by and see our countrymen marched down into the dark and never come back up again, powerless to help them."

"Then, all is truly lost…" Jeanette crumpled in on her small frame and tried to hide under the skin blanket again. Her relief from the pall of doom had been brief and all too easily crushed.

Manuel held a hand over his stubble-shadowed chin and visibly warred with himself. Eventually, his face hardened into a firm resolve and he took a few steps over to kneel by his newest cellmate.

"Now, now, Jeannie, I don't think we can give up hope quite yet." By his tone, he didn't quite believe what he heard himself saying, and grunts of surprise and contempt from around the cell said the other inmates didn't either. "What I mean to say is, if we give up hope, we are already dead. Since we are still breathing, a chance to escape still exists, however unlikely. The trolls are bound to slip up eventually, and when they do, we need to be ready."

Although his little pep-talk hadn't had much of an impact on the other men, Jeanette recovered from her brush with catatonic despair and looked up to face the man who was showing so much compassion to a total stranger. The heat that bloomed in her chest was delightful and undeniable. Almost immediately, she got a grip on her panic and realized that this was no way for a monarch to behave. If they had any hope to survive, it was only together, and only if someone could unite this rabble and give them something to believe in. She immediately decided to reveal her true identity.

Of course, on the heels of that epiphany was the realization that none of these people would ever believe she was Princess Jeanette. Dressed in a tattered rag of a silk nightgown, weeks unkempt in the mud, she must look like a half-dead street urchin. The last bit of proof she'd held had been her grandmother's hairpin emblazoned with the royal seal, and that was currently in her stomach. She'd swallowed it to guard it from looters, and had quite nearly been beaten when the witch doctors discovered what she'd done.

That sobering reality weighed Jeanette down into the dirt again, and although she made sure to give Manuel an eyelash flutter and her best smile for his efforts, she settled quickly into the same dazed state as the other inmates. What they needed right now was a miracle. All she had to offer were bubbly daydreams of Manuel carrying her away from this nightmare on a shining white horse.

**Troll City, The Southern Swamp**

Link waded low in the murky water and watched as a group of trolls strolled by the wharf where his target lay moored. A small boat of some sort was essential if he wanted to cross the stagnant lake surrounding the distant island city, if not for the ease of travel, then to give him an edge against any alligators that might try for a taste of hero meat. He'd learned to be wary of the huge-mawed lizards very early in his romp through this bug-infested hell-bog, and while there were fewer the closer he'd gotten to his destination, there was no sense being reckless.

The trolls hanging out by the docks were oddly small, and Link realized that they were young. It was weird to think of a monster race that had women and children, or non-combatants of any kind, for that matter, and he mulled on that as he slowly waded toward some of the neglected watercraft.

Moblins and Lizardmen kept their societies hidden away, either through nomadic wandering by the Moblins, or subterranean burrowing by the Lizards. In either case, every member of either species Link had ever encountered had been unequivocally out for his blood. If he'd stayed in the human-controlled portion of Ghent, that might have remained true, but in the heart of troll country, he was going to have to face up to certain realities.

Slipping one boat out into the open lake under the cover of darkness was no particular effort, and Link wrapped an oar in scrap cloth and slipped away in near-silence. Although the night traffic on the water around the city was still quite lively, the trolls all had lanterns on their boats, and it was a big body of water. Link had a few encounters with floating debris and one curse-strewn instance where he was certain a few cargo boats would come close enough to spot him, but the journey to the far shore was ultimately uneventful.

Along the way, Link had plenty of time to ponder, and was soon seriously bothered by the conclusions he'd found—or rather, failed to find. In his mind, Link could not decide how he would treat trolls that presented no immediate threat. The fact that it wasn't obvious that he should spare anyone not actively trying to stab him was sobering, but he couldn't deny it. He knew with certainty that he wouldn't have any problem at all spitting a troll-whelp like he was putting down a rabid dog. It remained to see if the emotional reality was as cold and empty as the intellectual one, and Link hoped he was just misjudging himself under pressure.

Trolls were vile, but they were sentient and civilized, in their own way, and Link couldn't understand where that killer instinct he'd encountered sourced from. Had it always been there, and he'd simply never noticed because he was only destroying creatures that were vile beyond doubt? How far did it apply—would it eventually encompass other races, or even other humans? Could he control it, or did it have some measure of influence over him?

The idea of simply murdering another human had never occurred to Link, but he had to speculate now over whether or not he'd feel any hesitance should it ever come up. He fully understood that it was not normal to have such a disconnection from the act of taking lives, even if he was only now beginning to comprehend how far that cold-blooded streak in him really extended.

Of course, there was only so much time he could give to speculation and introspection before it was once again time to act. He abandoned the little boat in a cove of overgrown water weeds and approached the city from some underbrush around the outskirts. Out here, little shacks stood next to root patches and hog farms, and Link tread softly, far away from the beaten paths. The last thing he needed was the troll equivalent of a guard dog to wake up the sleeping troll civilians. If he wasn't careful infiltrating the city, he'd have to face the real-life test of his newly-discovered coldness a lot sooner than he'd feared.

Once again, the journey was blessedly uneventful. One would imagine that just the sheer number of trolls living on the island would make it difficult to sneak around, but there were irrigation ditches and flood-works aplenty to provide cover, and by following these, Link was near the city before midnight.

Here the streets were crowded with trolls working and traveling by lamplight, and the stuffed unicorn pointed directly toward the center, where an enormous step-pyramid dominated the landscape, almost glowing in the dim moonlight. As far as infiltration destinations went, it was a doozy, but once again, Link found a way. The irrigation and flash-flood prevention canals that perforated the little island extended into the city as well, and the largest one climbed the steep, weedy slopes to the pyramid itself. The area had been without rain for a week—Link wouldn't even get his ankles wet.

Sticking to shadows, staying mobile, and skirting through open areas on pure bluff bravado, Link made it all the way to the pyramid without raising an alarm. For that achievement, he happily nominated himself for a breather, and he set down to get some air into his lungs after a two-mile hike where he hardly dared to breathe lest he give himself away. He fingered the whispering stone around his neck, and then switched to his fragment of the twilight mirror hanging next to it. Goddesses willing, he'd be adding another princess to his collection of acquaintances tonight. He considered the context of that last thought, and would have grinned at the double-entendre if he'd had the breath.

Link returned to his infiltration, climbing up the ten-foot rise to the first step of the pyramid. From up here, there was little chance of being spotted so long as he kept a low profile, and he was easily able to avoid the guards. Following the toy's directions, Link soon found himself above a smaller building that jutted from the edge of the pyramid. By the smell of blood and excrement, as well as the armed guards, he pegged it as some kind of above-ground dungeon. With the advantage of absolute and total surprise, the two guards didn't even make a sound before they died. Link looted some keys and dragged the two huge corpses into the prison. He prayed the guard change wasn't anytime soon, but there simply wasn't time to actually _plan_ any of this.

Inside, Link found rows of cells. They were all empty. With a muttered curse, he pulled out the stuffed toy and watched it leap energetically on the string. He was so close now, it pointed like an eager puppy straining at its leash. Where it pointed was toward an open arch that led into the pyramid's bowels, torchlight brightening the light stone walls.

Sighing, Link loosened his recently bloodied sword in its scabbard, then took out his bow and strung it. This was obviously an introduction to the 'interesting' part of the night, and he'd already been luckier than he could have hoped. When he was back on his feet after bending his recurving bow back, he started down the menacing, ominously unguarded path.

Eventually, Link reached the bottom of the downward stairway, finding himself in the pyramid's central chamber, a vaulted dome deep down within the heart of the building. The door opened up onto a stone bridge that spanned the huge chasm between the sides of the room and the central platform that dominated the interior, the depths of the cavernous pit being unbroken shadow. Archways identical to the one Link hid in dotted the walls, bridges leading from them to the middle just like his. Upon the central platform, a great altar was situated beneath the domed ceiling's only feature—a great skylight that tunneled through several stories of pyramid to open the deep-down chamber to the distant sky.

The altar was the center of furious activity, a dozen male and female trolls standing in a circle around four other trolls that surrounded the central podium. Off to one side, a mass of about thirty-odd human prisoners were guarded by a handful of trolls in heavy scale armor that gleamed in the encompassing torchlight—the same kind of armor worn by the troll in the cisterns who'd been so much trouble. Those were the only armed trolls in the room, but the ones around the altar were bound to be magic users, so Link stopped to try and etch out a plan of attack. As he wracked his mind for some clever ploy, a great voice boomed out through the chamber, and although he couldn't understand it, he recognized it as Ghentese.

**The Great Pyrimid Sacrifice Chamber, The Southern Swamp**

Jeanette hid in the natural wall formed by so many burly men standing around her, Manuel's hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture as she shivered against the cold cavern air and overpowering pall of doom. When the low-key gibberish chanting was replaced by a larger-than life booming voice in what she'd come to understand as troll-accented Ghentese, she nearly jumped out of what little clothing she'd managed to salvage, as well as her skin.

"People ahv Ghent!" the voice bellowed, echoing through the huge room. All attention drew to one female troll, distinguished for being nearly as tall as a male troll, if not even close to as burly, and by the headdress of long, painted leather straps that dangled down her body, curving around her ample, bare chest and twining through her cresting mass of red-dyed hair. Her green skin was absolutely coated in tribal tattoos that almost seemed to move across her body with a will of their own, and her tiny tusks were capped with golden barbs.

"Tonight," she bellowed, shaking a skull-tipped fetish stick, "ya be 'onahd ta bear witness ta de beginnin' ahv de end for ya ahrogant, fat, complacent nation! We are de Tet'chult, de chosan people ahv de gods! The gods demselves 'ave shown me, Salik, de path ta glory! You should be proud! As de final sacrahfices for de birth ahv Ho'rakah, you will be his fahst vicdems! Now behold, a god—BORN!"

The final word cemented some blasphemous ritual, and the air in the room throbbed like a great gong had been struck, but produced no noise. A sense of unnatural energy vibrated around them all, making hair stand on end and teeth chatter in everyone who noticed it. Even the other trolls besides the high-priestess Salik seemed to be awed and terrified as the great magic came into effect.

A brilliant light appeared over the altar where Salik's subordinate witch doctors had focused their efforts, and every troll not bearing a weapon hurried to fall and prostrate themselves. Salik basked in the light, the glow illuminating the black tattoos on her green skin, her red-dyed hair seeming to catch fire in the brilliance. The ground all around began to rumble, and suddenly, the walls crumbled and ruptured. Screams erupted as the ceiling began to drop bits of shattered masonry into the observers, but paused as the roots of the deep swamp burst through the walls. Growing at an unbelievable rate, they quickly coated every surface of the dome and began to turn inward, reaching toward the light like a billion hard, woody fingers. The shaking ground and waving light cast the unbelievable scene in a nightmarish framework, and most everyone was rendered speechless as they watched the vines begin to form together into a cohesive mass above the altar.

Jeanette averted her eyes from the scene, unable to stand the intense sensations of all this magic anymore. All around her, other prisoners who had been overcome were now as prostrate as the religiously-inspired trolls, although they were victims of woe rather than spiritual ecstasy. Jeanette began a heartfelt prayer to the Mother Goddess, and to her everlasting shame, was surprised when it was promptly answered. One doesn't expect prompt service after supplicating to a god, but the princess had her prayer for salvation answered instantly, and bloodily, and all-around more wonderfully than she ever could have imagined when she made it.

"Please, someone save me," was the general gist of her request, although she had been in a panic at the time. As the throats of the nearest three guards exploded into gory ruin, sprouting arrows, the Goddess _delivered_.

**The Great Pyramid Sacrifice Chamber Entryway, The Southern Swamp**

Link frowned at the light show, dodging in front of the advancing roots before they could block off the arch he was hidden behind like they did every other surface of the domed chamber. In his experience, big, flashy magic like that never happened before fluffy bunnies came out of hats or beautiful women appeared to give out kisses and flower bouquets. If his instinct was to be trusted, it was going to produce a very big monster, a prospect that delighted him in ways that he had no words to describe.

Riding the wave of euphoria, Link lost focus, beginning his attack without a further thought for safety. The first few arrows took out the most immediate threats, the elite troll guards. The element of surprise worked in his favor, and he managed to put crippling shots through all ten before he'd even reached the other side of the bridge over the endless pit, everyone too distracted by the 'god's' appearance to even notice the violence. Most of the shots wouldn't finalize them, but it would certainly keep them out of the picture for a while.

Rushing past the crowd of stunned and terrified prisoners, Link took a position a ways back from the edge of the trolls' magic circle and knelt down to take aim. His next arrow was targeted directly for the head Sorceress, a being who he'd had the oddest sense of recognition toward since the moment he'd first noticed her. She'd started shouting, and he'd looked at her, and he'd known her. The recognition had been accompanied by such a wave of instantaneous, bilious enmity that he'd almost been overcome by it. The last time he'd felt such instant dislike for a person he'd only just met was when he at last stood before Gannondorf at the end of his fated journey. That realization aroused a terrible suspicion in Link's heart, and he was going to try and stamp it out, here and now.

His arrow flew straight and true, and struck the sorceress so hard that it shattered. It shattered because it struck a solid barrier of magic clinging around her like a second skin, his attack doing nothing at all but finally drawing her attention away from the giant coalescing from the root system. He could see her shouting, but couldn't make it out over the din from the magical display going on. What he did see was a strange golden glow flickering from her mouth, although he couldn't have been sure of it.

Apparently in response to her shouts, all of the genuflecting witch doctors stood and took note of Link's uninvited arrival. Several them began conjuring spells simultaneously, and Link had his patched shield out in a flash, but he didn't even have time to plan his approach before tree roots began shooting out of the suspended mass like scorpion tails and impaling every living thing within reach. The unfortunate trolls and a human who'd tried to flee too close to the summoning diagram were sucked into the root mass without a moment's pause, and of everyone anywhere near the altar, only Salik was spared.

She clearly hadn't been expecting that part, by the expression of half-horrified anger she'd grown, but there was little opportunity for her to check her notes before the world-shaking force stopped. It ended suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, and the suspended ball of roots lowered slowly onto the altar. It was a good twenty feet across, and Salik was forced to retreat or be crushed under her own creation.

Link was reduced to playing a waiting game, circling around the root ball as he considered it with hard eyes. He eventually came to rest in front of the remaining prisoners, who were all dividing their attention between him and the thing that had appeared. Some who still possessed presence of mind were now looting weapons from the trolls Link had assassinated, but mostly they were just staring around in dumb awe. All around them, the roots that had covered the walls began to shrivel and die, the brown death spreading over the dome until it touched the roots that connected them to the main mass, severing it from its ties.

Like a great behemoth rising from a long slumber, the root mass stirred with sudden life, two great arms unfolding like sprouting shoots as stubby legs kicked out beneath it. In seconds, with a sound like a tree falling, the root ball condensed into a vaguely humanoid lump. Around were a human's chest would be, the headless form began to glow, the roots taking on an internal light, not unlike an enormous eye of balled-up wood and vines. The 'eye' throbbed with light, filling the room with its harsh glow, and just beneath it, a gash opened on its belly from one end to the other.

The beast moved like lightning, digging its hands into the platform's tiles and dragging itself toward the massed humans. It closed the distance in a rushing bound, and the gash under its eye opened like a clamshell and revealed a maw lined by teeth of eye-stinging lightning in front of a star-filled void, roaring so loud that several people were knocked clear off their feet and everyone else cowered away, covering their faces in abject terror. Not counting those who simply fainted, the only one who didn't scatter before that monster was Link, who stared into the abyss of its supernatural intestines and angry, red glowing eye-spot with a look of confident anticipation.

The thing's stomach was an infinite pit and its teeth were hotter than burning coals, but he just stood there and let breath like the exhaust of a volcanic vent blow his hair back. The sight was so very counter-intuitive that even the monster, apparently not quite as brainless as its lack of a head might suggest, stopped its rampage before it could really start and focused him with a particularly baleful stare.

"_So it seems we have a hero_?" the disembodied voice echoed through the inside of every human and troll skull, always in the native tongue of the listener. The eye-glow suddenly expanded, and then narrowed slowly. "_No… you're _The_ Hero_." The eye-spot rotated in a slow circle on the creature's ample chest of entwined wood. "Delicious. _The golden power called me here and bound me. But if I consume _you_, I will be free from my geas! The entire world will be mine to consume at my discretion_!"

"Big words tubby, now let's dance." Link didn't bother shouting, but simply drew his sword and shield again and flipped his blade through a lazy circle.

**Elsewhere in the Great Pyramid Sacrifice Chamber, The Southern Swamp**

Jeanette lay in a half-sprawl where her reflexive retreating scramble had landed her. When that impossible monster had roared, she'd obeyed instincts that easily overpowered thought, scattering with the others like a herd of frightened mice. It was several seconds before she'd overcome her panic and turned around to wonder why she wasn't dead yet. That's when she'd first gotten a good look at her savior, the long-eared warrior in his scruffy equipment, the only possible source of the arrows they'd all been so completely distracted from.

She saw him stare down the behemoth's continued bellowing without so much as budging, his posture suggesting a tapping toe and a sigh, though she witnessed neither. Immediately, she was overcome by the thrill of cold concern all kind people experience when they witness someone too crazy or stupid to recognize danger about to die for their insanity. No rational creature could possibly look into that infinity-storm of a stomach and not flee, and here this man looked ready to fight it. _Fight it_! Like a man could even _bother_ such a leviathan. It was insanity in motion, the craziest thing she'd ever witnessed, and her confusion and fresh horror temporarily overcame her fear.

When the monster spoke into their minds, Jeanette noted the strange conversation and dismissed it; she wasn't even certain she hadn't just imagined it in a bout of terror-driven insanity. When the stranger taunted the beast in unaccented Hylian, brandishing a sword that was more like a toothpick in the face of his opponent, she knew he truly was a crazy fool. The root-monster simply drew up one great claw and prepared to smash the strange warrior like a petulant child with a toy soldier. The arm moved like a battering ram, whistling as it went, and a shriek escaped her lips as her eyes closed in an embarrassingly girly reflex.

Rather than a comical splat sound, the fist simply rocked the platform under them and powdered the stones, and Jeanette opened her eyes again when she heard a low of wonder rise from her countrymen. She looked up to see that the warrior had dodged, and was now kneeling in a nimble crouch and eyeing the monster with a hard, even expression. Her heart swelled with wonder that the suicidal madman had survived, unaware that he hadn't even gotten started yet.

The monster grunted its displeasure, striking unexpectedly with a quick backhand, trying to catch the warrior off guard. The Hylian back-flipped like a trained acrobat, sheathing his sword and pulling out a strange device before he even came back to his feet again. There was a metallic clattering, and Jeanette's eyes bulged as the warrior shot some sort of chain at the beast, latched onto its rough, woody flesh, and went hurtling toward it like a catapulted boulder. In-flight, his sword came out with a glorious ring, and he held it out like a stubby lance, using his momentum to drive it into the center of the unprepared eye-spot.

The beast reeled, its belly-mouth flicking open to full cavern size as it let out a bellowing, thunderous roar of agony. The eye spot, fluid on the root-mass, scurried away from the spot the warrior had pierced, even as it contracted to the size of a dinner plate and flickered from red to white in a strobe of pain. The beast's thrashing sent the warrior flying high in the air, and he tossed down some kind of black sphere, even as he turned his chain-device upward and used it to latch onto the dying roots that covered the dome above.

The black sphere with its hissing, flaming tail fell down and entered the monster's widened maw, falling down, down into the deep eternity, entirely defying the laws of nature. It then exploded, but was not little more than a brief flash of brilliance in a cold infinity. There was a sigh of disappointment from the mesmerized spectators as this brilliant tactic failed to pan out, and Jeanette wondered if everyone else could really be as mind-boggling captivated as she was. As far as her brain was concerned, what she was seeing now was impossible, and that made it hard to take the danger involved as seriously as she had earlier.

The monster recovered from its wound quickly, turning its eye, now smaller and more mobile on its chest, up to consider the warrior on the ceiling. It held up both arms, pointed them like ballista bolts, and then they were growing quicker then the eye could follow, spearing out to crush and maim. The warrior drew another device like the first, catapulting himself away from the monster's extending fists before they could tear a huge chunk out of the dome. The impact shook the pyramid and threw everyone still standing from their feet.

**Midair in the Great Pyramid Sacrifice Chamber, The Southern Swamp**

Link considered his target as he dangled from roughly the center of the dome. The crushing strike had destroyed the wall, but it had also left the beast wide open, and Link slinked downward on his claw-shot before blasting his other one toward the blank space where its head should have been. The next second, Link landed hard between its shoulder blades, his sword held in both hands.

The eye dot was now swirling and darting over its shoulder and around its chest, trying to be a hard target as it dragged its arms free of the distant dome and got back on guard. Link wasn't taking his chances this time, he didn't even bother with the eye. In a few seconds, he'd gouged some slots into the tight root network and left behind five black, hissing gifts. He then tumbled down its back and got some low hand-holds as the row of bombs went off above him.

Again, the beast bellowed, the motion of opening its unreal mouth nearly tossing Link away again. Its arms were freed by its thrashing, winding in to regular length like elastic cords. Link was just about to climb up for another go when a tiny spot of light came eye-to-magic eye with him, and he realized he'd been caught. The monster's back erupted into a wall of sharp wooden spines so quickly that Link was stabbed three times in along his arm, thigh, and upper chest, even as he was tossed back by the force of it. He landed in a roll and came up to a guard behind his shield, tender on his fresh, bleeding wounds.

The monster moved to capitalize, turning around and opening its great mouth. There was no gradual build-up—the suction went from zero to tornado in an instant, and Link caught his hand on a floor stone loosened by their battle just in time to avoid being pulled into that gaping void. The broadsword-length spines of glowing lightning it used for teeth seemed to reach forward like eye-lashes around an empty socket, beckoning Link toward the eternity waiting for him.

The suction continued as Link's grip weakened, and it became clear that the beast would never have to stop and empty the lungs it didn't have. On the other hand, it was concentrating too hard to keep the little spot of its eye in motion. Facing desperation, Link released his handhold and drew his bow, grabbing an arrow at random and launching it at the target as he slid all too quickly toward its open maw. His arrow struck true, and actually turned out to be one of his pre-prepared bomb arrows besides. The act of firing it had lit its quick tinder, and while the agony of being pierced by the arrow itself distracted it, the attached explosive had all the time it needed to detonate right in its sweet spot.

The vacuum cut off seconds from drawing Link into the void, which vanished along with the teeth as the entire unnatural affair collapsed into a pile of stinking roots, utterly inanimate. Link's eye didn't linger on the roots, however, as they'd been caught by a slight glimmer that rocketed into the air and fell down to earth again like a gemstone fired from a slingshot. It hit the ground some distance away, the sound of it echoing in the suddenly quiet chamber, and Link felt his feet carrying him toward it at a run before he knew what he was doing.

Some instinct told him that this wasn't over as long as that little glowing bauble was whole and unharmed, and he didn't slow up as he drew his sword and attempted to smash it. The tiny thing was a tough target, but he would have nailed it if it hadn't jumped away like a living thing. His sword clanged off the bare rock and left a scar in the stone, and he was after the sparkling sphere in a merry little chase. The thing was quick, and even Link's expert strikes weren't quite enough to keep up—it was like trying to hit a combination between a cockroach and a grasshopper. Still, he was making a good go at it when a sudden blast of heat kicked him aside like a ragdoll and sent him tumbling away, rather scorched.

The flaming pillar, which was easily a foot wide and reached upward in an expanding cone like a belch of dragonfire, persisted for a moment before fading. Link scraped himself up, more hurt than he was willing to admit, and his combat instinct drew his eyes to the boss troll. Her red-dyed mane, which had seemed to be burning in the right light, was now literally burning, although this didn't seem to bother her. More flames danced around her fingers and traced through her endless tattoos, and even thirty feet away, the heat she was giving off was uncomfortable.

She spoke, apparently to her newly summoned minion, and there was that golden glow from her mouth again, along with that awful sense of familiarity. Link got up to his feet again, wary of new incantations, and realized too late that the glowing ball had escaped. His last view of it was when it skittered into the roots he'd driven it from and animated them, the great mass of it leaping upward on extended tendrils and climbing out the skylight tunnel. The witch doctor screamed and cursed at it all the way, apparently unhappy with whatever it intended to do out in the city, and then turned her attention back toward Link.

"I'm gonna see ya ta youah grave, Hero." The Troll's Hylian was terrible, but Link was too stunned to hear it at all to make any criticism. Although he noticed she put so much emphasis on 'hero' that he could actually hear the 'h'. "I'll take ya tri-farce, den go to 'ylia an get da last 'un. An den all da 'umans will be meat fah da takin'!"

"How the hell—" Link began, staggered to hear talk of such things from this unknown and unexpected source. The Triforce was a legend in Hyrule, connected inexorably to the Goddesses and so known by all. But what could _trolls_ know about it?

"ARY—AHHHHHLLLLLL!" the which doctor shrieked before Link could get one word further, her inhumanly long tongue flicking out as she projected the yell as far as she could.

That was when Link saw something that he had far more trouble believing and comprehending than any magically-animated root-fiend. There in the which doctor's tongue was a small golden triangle, an inch on a side. It was imbedded directly into her flesh, almost as though it were a sliver of glowing metal she'd pierced herself with. The glow, exposed to him directly, demanded an echo from him, and Link looked down to see the spiritual version of his own Triforce shard projected over his hand from where it was ostensibly integrated into his soul.

Before he could get over his surprise, the troll leader vanished in a burst of orange fire. Cries echoing hers came from all directions down the halls, and he realized she'd raised an alarm. It was a wonder that there hadn't already been investigating reinforcements, but he supposed this ceremony was supposed to be noisy in the first place. And then Link didn't really have time to worry about impossible Triforce shards or burning sorceresses. He'd come here to do a job.

Pulling himself together, Link took out his doll homing-device and gripped it firmly around the middle. The pull was so strong now that he could feel it in his hand, and had to hold on tight to keep it from getting away. It pointed back toward the largest group of shell-shocked prisoners, and that's where Link went. He got closer, and the crowd parted, one and all stepping back away from him. This kind of treatment was exactly why he didn't like to go all-out, much less do it where someone could see him. He'd be surprised if he'd be able to convince them he was human, not the least because he didn't have many arguments that sounded convincing to his own judgment, so he couldn't really envision them working on others.

The crowd parted until Link came up against a guy not much older than him, around the same height, and with about the same look about him, albeit he was sporting weeks of unruly beard. If not for the ears and the eyes, Link could have been looking at his older brother. The toy pulled resolutely toward him, but he clearly wasn't a famously cute young princess, so Link moved to step around him. For his trouble, he got a poke in the chest. The instinctively combative response was quick and hot, but he swallowed it.

"I'm looking for a young woman so—um, I mean, you wouldn't happen to speak Hylian?" Link tried, hoping that diplomacy would meet the need for a compromise between haste and tact.

"I don't know who you are," the man's Hylian was badly accented, but perfectly understandable, "I don't even know if you're human. So if you think I'm just going to hand her over without an explanation—"

"Brilliant!" Link said, and smiled. Clearly this guy had his wits about him. "I'm here specifically to rescue a certain young woman. I suppose I could swing the tricky task of adding the rest of you lot to my list if I could get a little cooperation."

"Why should I believe you-?" the man began to interrogate him, and Link let go of the stuffed toy pulling at his grip. It flew through the air and landed on his chest, its huggable softness doing no harm but surprising him so much that he dodged out of the way in reflex. Revealed was a very small young woman with very messy black hair that had probably been straight once. The shreds of a long-destroyed silky nightgown clung here and there, and her ruined hair was doing as much to keep her modesty as any of what was left. The stuffed toy landed on the owner that had invested so much emotion in it, hitting her in the stomach, and the spell that motivated it was broken. The girl caught the toy before it could fall and looked at it with disbelieving eyes.

"Majesty?" She asked, and Link wondered if it shouldn't be him advancing that question. Then he realized it was the toy horse's name. If that wasn't evidence he'd found his bird, nothing was, and Link resolved to make the best impression he could, given that he could hear marching feet advancing down several of the many tunnels that faced this platform from across the ring of pit surrounding them.

"My Lady, Princess Jeanette Orlouge-D'Montaigne," Link began, bowing at the waist, "I've come to get you out of here." There was a ruckus as several groups of lightly armed trolls found their passage into the main dome chamber blocked by dead roots. That was nothing compared to the fuss caused when Link mentioned the Princess's title to a crowd of already shocked P.O.W.s. At first, no one moved, and Jeanette looked out at the shocked faces over the hug she was giving her beloved toy.

"There will be time for questions later," she said, sounding alive and hopeful, "I don't know what miracle brought you here, but I'm not complaining. Let's go." To the soldiers around her, who'd heard little but half-mumbled heartbreak from her so far, it was a strong reinforcement. One man kneeled, and that set of a spreading wave of prostration. There were whispers of 'princess' and mumbles of respectful nothings from a crowd of grunts that would never get closer than a parade-side view of anything remotely royal. The only one who didn't kneel was the soldier who'd stood up to Link, probably because if he did, he couldn't insinuate himself between the girl who turned out to be heir to the throne and the inhuman foreign vagabond.

"Say, you look capable," Link said to the man, hoping to hurry this up and get while the getting was good, "Any chance you can get your countrymen organized? Even unarmed, we'll stand a better chance of escape as an organized force than as a rabble."

"Who are you to—" the man began to object, but was silenced when Jeanette cut in.

"Please, we must work together Lieutenant Manuel," the girl's voice was small, but carried a note of command that many claimed a person had to be born with. "What is this but that chance you spoke of before? We mustn't squander it with internecine conflict."

"… Fine…" the man called Manuel turned and started issuing orders, and the mass of soldiers, so suddenly infused with hope and a purpose, obeyed like new men. They were well on their way to clearing a path through the roots blocking the prison-access tunnel as Link and the few others guarding their backs watched the trolls make similar progress on the roots holding them back.

As he waited, Link explained to the mousy little girl what news of the outside world he could without panicking her. He described the political upheaval as vaguely as possible to justify his news that she wouldn't be going straight home to see her family. The full explanation was a job for someone who understood it, like Zelda. He'd probably just mess up the facts and distress her even worse than the grim facts warranted.

As he spoke to her, something began to finagle in the back of his mind, something he should have realized but that kept slipping out, just as he was getting a hang on it. When it finally hit him, he stopped talking to snap his fingers and shout in pleased revelation.

"Manuel!" He said, not realizing he was talking out loud.

"What now, Hylian freak?" The man asked, his black mood not improved by Link's familiar address. Link just coughed past his awkward pause and mumbled some pointers about their escape plan, getting a dirty look for his inanity. Still, all that couldn't overcome his satisfaction. He couldn't wait to see Monica's face when he showed up back at their 'base' with her old man in tow.

A few minutes later, Manuel was coming back over, probably to report readiness, when the center of the platform near the altar erupted into flame again. The flames deposited the high witch doctor and a team of trolls in ceremonial clothes carrying huge drums. They began to tap out a deep tribal rhythm on the big leather surfaces, and the air was instantly charged with a magical tinge more powerful than any Link had felt since he'd faced Gannondorf and Zant.

"This is bad," Link stated the obvious as he stood his ground, everyone else backing away from the bloom of heat ahead of them. "I'm going to have to stay and delay them. Head out into the city ahead of their warning—that monster out there should be plenty of distraction. Take the drainage canal to the docks, and then _split up_. They'll have a harder time catching you if you go off in different directions!"

"No!" Jeanette and Manuel objected to that plan simultaneously.

"What do you think you can accomplish here?" Manuel overrode the young girl's purely emotional response with an appeal to reason. It said much for his idealism that he even bothered after watching Link defy all reason earlier. "We must all flee! The princess stands the best chance if you accompany her—if anyone should stand as a distraction, it should be _me_!"

"Not a chance—" But Link was cut off as a new pillar of fire erupted from the stone platform just ahead of them. The noise and heat were deafening, and when he looked over, the witch doctor queen of the trolls was leering their way with a hideous mask under her burning mane. She picked up the beat, and began to undulate in a tribal dance that took full advantage of her ample, unbound chest and long hair. When the beat peeked suddenly, she thrust her arms forward, generating an even bigger flame-wall along with a blast wave that knocked Manuel and Jeanette from their feet.

"Uh, yeah," Link helped up his two primary charges and reconsidered the furious desire to charge that was bubbling in his chest, "We're out of here. Go! Hurry!"

Link drew his bow and covered them as they retreated across the bridge. All his arrows evaporated into ash before getting close, or they simply missed as the troll queen leaped and writhed in seemingly random combinations. The beat picked up, and she generated a few more explosions, each one closer than the last, but these at least lacking the intensity to bowl them over.

Everyone was across the bridge now except Link, and Manuel ran back to drag him away. Link turned to make good on their escape, when a final rising flurry of drumming announced a finale. The next explosion rocked the stone bridge, and Link felt it giving away under his feet.

"Tell my kids I love them!" Manuel shouted, not necessarily to Link, as eyes all across the prisoner group popped in terror to see the bridge collapsing behind the two heroes. He then took an off-balance Link and pitched him forward toward the exit.

Link felt a moment of truth. He saw Monica's face in his mind's eye, and he knew he owed the child his life. What's more, he'd grown to love the little girl as much as any child from his own home village, even though they'd never exchanged words past their language barrier. His claw-shots were both out in an instant, and he planted his feet, losing any chance of outrunning the bridge's crumbling span that Manuel's sacrifice had bought him.

One clawshot fired toward the roots above their escape route, and the other sought out Manuel's quickly vanishing body. Link caught the man by his belt buckle, both tools at full chain-extension, and heaved in pain as the soldier's weight was funneled across his chest by the jerking stop.

Under the weight of two, the mechanism that let the clawshot retract would never work. Link's solution to this was to retract Manuel, thrust the clawshot attached to the wall into his hand, and fire the one he'd freed from the man's belt up next to the first one. Each on his own clawshot, they retracted upward and appeared in the archway to the sound of astonishment and cheering.

"Tell your kids yourself," Link managed to gasp out. Manuel smiled at him in wonder, and Jeanette rushed up to hug the young soldier. Link hustled them forward, and then by chance glanced down at his feet. There was a glowing orange spot the size of an orange there, and Link reacted without thinking.

With a shove, Link sent the two former prisoners forward and himself backward, just in time to be slapped in the face with searing flames and a hot punch of super-heated air. The eruption tumbled the princess and soldier to their knees, but it punted Link like a kicking mule. The air was forced out of his lungs, and he found himself falling through the air. And falling, and falling, and falling…

**The Great Pyramid Sacrifice Chamber Entryway, The Southern Swamp**

When Jeanette and Manuel looked back, the passageway leading to the crumbled bridge was vacant. Jeanette shrieked, and the wail of despair continued until it melted into a moan and she buried her face in the soldier's abs. Manuel looked to his hand in horror to find that he still held the warrior's chain tool, and his eyes found the other one languishing in a corner, blown from the man's hands by that concussion. Out of pure wishful thinking, he shook off Jeanette and rushed to the edge to look over, collecting the lost tool on the way.

"A little help?" the warrior asked him, from where he was clinging to some roots a little ways down. Manuel almost choked on his tongue, but reached out to help the hero up. There was a scramble for grip, and his flailing hand caught on a pendant the man had been wearing. Then the warrior cursed violently, and Manuel was shoved backward again just in time to avoid being gutted by a fire pillar.

When Manuel could sit up again, he held the warrior's pendent in his hand. He had time to hop forward and look down at the horrifyingly vacant, black pit, and then he was retreating under a weight of not only magical threat, but spears thrown by troll infantry. His heart throbbed with pain to have been so close to repaying that freshly minted life-debt, and now to never have the opportunity. Whatever his first impression had been, that stranger had died a hero, and a complete mystery.

**Midair in the Pit of Sacrifice, The Southern Swamp**

Link woke up. He wasn't sure if he'd woken up at first, because the view didn't alter from pitch black. Of course, he figured he hurt way too much to be dead, and he was pretty sure that the afterlife didn't smell like swamp-rot. He was lying on a bed of vines that seemed to be suspending him in midair, and he felt like he'd been beaten with sticks. For a long moment, he didn't know if he was insanely lucky to have survived the fall, or a victim of cruel fate, doomed to waste away in the darkness.

Then Link got over himself. He was alive, and he had a job to do. He wasn't about to let a thing like a bottomless, dark pit stand in the way of that.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

This chapter, by and large, is one of the pieces that I enjoy so much that I come back and read it later and can't believe it was me that wrote it. Of course, as I revised it, I once again faced the challenge of putting standardized scene transitions into a story where the narrative style is inconsistent. Although there was no meaningful time skipping, the P.O.V. changes many times between Jeanette and Link. The result is a burdensome overabundance of bold title bars. Oh well.


	10. Crawl in the Dark

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 10: Crawl in the Dark**

**Midair in the Pit beneath The Great Pyramid, The Southern Swamp**

Link carefully sat up on the bundle of roots suspending him so precariously over the inky void, trying not to let the utter blackness disorient him. The past several hours had been spent in repose, his perch in the underground foliage too secure and his situation too distressing to warrant anything but a little rest. Nowhere he could get to anytime soon was going to help anyone, so there had been little need to rush. He'd even thought to take a moment and contact Zelda, since their per-arranged communication window had doubtless come and gone by now, only to find that he'd lost the whispering stone. That revelation prompted an extended session of cursing, and he spent the rest of his aerial relaxation time securing his Twilight Mirror fragment necklace, his only memento of Midna, in such a way that it would not similarly disappear.

Eventually, more or less restored by the chill air swirling around his midnight hammock, he set about extracting himself from the net of roots. Except, doing even that much without a single light to go by proved the next best thing to impossible, and Link cursed heartily as he fumbled for his lantern. By all rights, there should be eternally-burning lamps or magical torches in any and all places of interest under the earth. He'd have settled for some glowing lava even, or hell, just some luminescent cave lichen would have been peachy. Didn't the goddesses understand that lantern oil costs money?

The light came up quickly enough, flaring in the black void and pressing out to create a circle of reality in the gaping darkness. Link's light-stung eyes quickly adjusted to the sight of roots, roots, and yet more roots. There was a tangled gash above him where this complex net had cushioned his fall, and solid networks of rooting in every other direction. The pit he'd fallen down was a circular doughnut moat around the central island where the Trolls held their rituals, and Link was distantly able to see both curving walls of the loop. By the faintest remnants of light that reached below, he could tell that the 'island' was suspended in the air on support foundations jutting from the walls. Beneath him, the pit opened up, uninterrupted by the central element, a well and proper oubliette of unbelievable size. He could not see the ground beneath him, and the faint light from above told him he'd fallen at least fifty feet from that bridge.

"Well, Link, up is almost certainly the only way out," Link told himself as he lay back in the net of roots again to contemplate his options. "It's also where duty waits, along with a city of damn angry Trolls. The cute princesses of two nations are relying on you to get things done up there. The topless sorceress-queen of the troll nation, quite possibly with a piece of the Triforce pierced into her tongue, wants to have you over for a barbeque."

Having said it out loud, Link realized he had better get started sooner rather than later. There was no telling how far ahead of him the escaped prisoners were by now, because he had no concept of how long he'd been unconscious. For all he knew, they'd already been recaptured or executed to the last solitary member. Still, looking into Manuel's eyes had been somewhat like looking into a mirror to some alternate reality where he'd had a life as a solider and a family man. If anyone besides Link could manage to get the young princess to safety, it would be him. None of which contemplations made the distant sliver of the chasm's opening get any closer.

With a resigned sigh, Link adjusted his position in the hanging roots until he had a decent footing on the wobbly, free-suspended net. He had a half-second's warning when the roots creaked and loose earth crumbled from all around him, but then the footing gave way and he was dropping like a rock again. His hands reflexively grabbed for his claw-shot, only for him to realize, too late, that he'd managed to leave both of them on the platform above while trying to evade all those magical fireblasts. He quickly clamped down on the net of roots around him instead, grabbing fistfuls of hand-hold that did nothing at all to slow his plummet. The roots were already weakened from his first impact with them, and now they simply couldn't handle his redistributed weight. His momentum picked up, and he clenched his body, bending his knees to prepare for a shattering impact.

The end of Link's new fall was almost as surprising as the start. Defying all expectations and the general trend of his luck, the net of roots clenched in his death grip finally caught on itself, slowing his fall as it stretched like some great spring above him. He slowed steadily, and when he came to a gentle, bobbing stop on his impromptu bungee cord, he finally dared to open his eyes. He looked up at what of the long, long bundle of roots he could see by his lamplight, and at the exit now twice as distant as it had been before. He then very carefully adjusted his grip and looked down his body. The ground was about ten inches beneath his bent legs.

Heaving another sigh, Link stretched out his legs until he was standing on firm ground again, or at least the pile of uneven rubble that was ostensibly the bottom of this death trap. He relaxed too soon, because the rubble gave way, and he was sent tumbling to the ground, clutching at the roots like an acrobat to a guide line. There was a wet snapping noise, and he dropped one foot to the ground, landing hard on his equipment satchels. The over-extended roots spilled down from the sky like a rain of damp rope, and a half-buried Link lay still and waited for the world to stop spinning. His thoughts could be rather effectively summarized by a furious black storm cloud, but he kept all cursing firmly internalized as he dug his way into the stagnant air of the pit.

"Well…" Link mumbled to himself as he sat up, shoving aside the remaining roots. "Any landing you can walk away from… and all that…" he declared with resigned amiability as he wondered at this fine new predicament. He also took a moment to grumble about the loss of his claw-shots. He'd been avoiding using them since they had been obtained on his divine quest, but he wasn't ready to part with them yet, and getting out of this pit without them was going to suck. With any luck though, getting them back would be as easy as finding the two VIPs he'd come to this swamp to rescue in the first place.

There was something uncomfortable beneath Link in this pile of detritus, and it was digging into his leg. He squirmed until he could get a grip on it, then jerked, only to find it was larger than he expected. His hand came back up from the pile with a foot-long rod, and Link stared at it in confusion for a moment before realizing it was a human femur bone. His eyes crept down to the pile beneath him for a closer look. Bones. It was all bones.

"_Lovely_." Link scrambled to his feet, finding his way off the pile in a motion that was motivated more by revulsion than anything else. Besides inherent disgust, he'd seen enough of the unquiet dead to be cautious of desecrating mortal remains, even by accident. From the sheer size of this pile, which stretched off to either side into the darkness, it must have been the accumulated wreckage of centuries of human sacrifice. Apparently, in troll culture, magical sacrifices were not eaten afterward, and they made them plenty regularly. At last, Link recognized the rancid stench in the air as horribly ripe decomposition.

Of course, the little voice in his mind more concerned with self-preservation than anything else piped up the next moment, and Link realized that the remains were scattered unrecognizably in the heaps. Quality meat, discarded wholesale and left to rot in a tradition with centuries of history. Combine those facts with the scattered bones, and the only conclusion was…

Link's train of thought was punctuated when a chattering sound erupted from all around him in the darkness. It was like fingernails on a stone tablet repeated thousands of times a minute, and it approached from a dozen different directions. In the shadows, large shapes could be seen. Smooth, curving, black surfaces caught his lamplight in bursts and flashes. Overcome by a sudden surge of frustration, Link gripped at his sword hilt without drawing it. He looked upward, intent on the distant light of the chamber so far above.

"Hey, Godesses!" He half-shouted, as the sheer absurdity of the situation weighed in on him. "If you've got your hand in all this, then you're doing a damn inconsistent job! There's providence, and then there's damnation. PICK ONE ALREADY!"

After that, Link had little time for anything other than swatting at flesh-eating cockroaches the size of dogs.

**Many Miles outside Troll City, The Southern Swamp**

Manuel snatched Jeanette before she could rush up over the next ridge, jerking her back into a protective embrace and shuffling backward until the both of them were nestled under the overhanging earth. The girl protested the rough treatment by reflex, but couldn't make a sound with his hand over her mouth. This was fortunate, because the next moment she could hear the rumble and crashing of a huge disturbance in the swamp. The riot of light, motion, and noise that was the armed patrol of veraq-mounted trolls was a terrifying experience to weather.

Every moment of heart-pounding fear was another when they might be discovered and overwhelmed. Already they'd heard the distant sound of screams and combat as other pair groups were discovered, and it was obvious from the noise that they weren't wasting time with recapture. Any humans that went back across the lake tonight would be doing so pre-gutted and ready for the troll larders.

Thinking about their own lake crossing earlier was enough to distract Jeanette from the immediate terror by replacing it with that earlier nightmare. It had not been difficult to slip out of the city, actually, because the monster summoned by troll magic had been driven into frenzy by its defeat. The city outside the pyramid had been in flames, chaos was rampant amid the shell-shocked civilians and totally surprised warriors, and absolutely no one was worrying about escaped humans.

However, the docks had been a different story, because everyone and their children were trying to escape to the far bank of the lake at the same time. Manuel had taken one look at the scrum of trolls fighting over the available shipping and turned right around. They'd gotten a hold of some decent-sized logs of driftwood and took their chances with the alligators. They'd made the decision to split up the first time in the middle of the chilled, murky water, for no reason Jeanette could comprehend beyond the fact that they had two logs. Because of this, there was no way of knowing if everyone had even made it over the lake, but at least everyone on Manuel and Jeanette's improvised craft had crawled out of the algae soup at the far bank.

After that had come hours upon hours of shuffling through the darkness, the hard swamp undergrowth cutting Jeanette's soft feet until she bled with every step. At length, she'd been lifted onto Manuel's back, if for no more merciful reason than the fact that they could ill afford to leave a trail any more obvious than the one they'd already cut. Veraqs had a terrible sense of smell, but a troll nose could follow a blood scent with little effort. Her feet had been bandaged, and they'd split up again to confuse pursuit. They'd split up again and again as dawn approached, and now in this last hour before the morning twilight, Manuel and Jeanette were alone.

By now, the world outside of Jeanette's strained imagination was quiet again. The powerful muscles gripping her to a carved and hardened chest released, and she could breathe easier at last. She turned and found herself looking into the soldier's haggard, but still young and handsome face.

"Alright, your majesty, it looks like we're in the clear for now. Our best bet will probably be to keep going through today and try to put more space between us and the city. The further out we are, the more ground their searches will have to cover. I know a few ways we can obscure our trail. With a little luck, we'll be able to throw off pursuit and sleep tonight."

"Yes, very well. I trust your judgment," Jeanette managed to acknowledge, before her strength gave out and she collapsed. Her feet were burning, or rather, her thighs were. She couldn't really feel much of anything distinctive beneath her knees. She risked a glance down at her legs and winced away when she saw the red, swollen flesh bound up beneath the improvised bandages. This filthy swamp was eating her alive, and she held a creeping fear of a mortal infection literally devouring her feet out from under her.

"I'll help you to walk, or I'll carry you again if I have to," Manuel assured her. "I'm going to get you out of here, Your Majesty, and we'll get you the best medication available as soon as we're back in human territory."

"T-thank you," Jeanette managed, although her whole body was wracked by the strain of the past ten hours. If she didn't sleep soon, she was going to collapse, and she still had an entire day of frantic marching to get through before she could dare to rest.

Noticing her fragile state, Manuel allowed for a little breather. It was difficult to make allowances for the princess's privileged upbringing, especially after almost a decade of despising the upper classes virulently. Of course, the _monarchy_ had never been a part of his personal grudge manifesto—only the feudal lords who'd collectively robbed him of the rank he deserved, such as his brother had managed to attain. Still, a part of him despaired for every moment they spent at rest, because it was another moment he wasn't dashing back toward his family. The Mother Goddess had granted him a second chance, pulling him out of a well of despair, practically delivering him from the very hand of death itself. To squander such an opportunity in consideration of something so mundane as his physical health and his duty to his princess seemed almost too much to bear.

Of course, there were worse people to be stranded in the wilderness with than Princess Jeanette, the Sapphire of Ghent. Rough treatment had coated her cultivated, delicate skin with bruises, sweat, and muck. A lack of her usual crew of personal attendants had left her hair a tangled mess. The state she'd been kidnapped in and now preserved through had left her the next closest thing to naked, with tattered scraps of silken nightclothes showing through to her swamp-soiled small clothes beneath.

Still, she was so beautiful she nearly glowed, even if that glow was hidden slightly under a coat of tarnish. One of the many reasons he'd consented to splitting their fugitive mass up was simply that he wasn't sure he could trust all of the men while under this extreme pressure, as almost none of them were from his own units. Honestly, the only thing that really kept Manuel's hands all to himself was constantly considering the young girl as a mirror of little Monica in four or five years time.

Romantic feelings tended to bloom uncontrollably when people confronted stressful, life-threatening situations. It was an observation, along with rape during retreat and the unconscionable bias of chivalric behavior on the battlefield, that had lead to the decision of barring women from professional and militia front line units. That choice had flown in the face of the precedent set by the Lady Hero in the Great Troll Wars of centuries past, but for the sake of discipline and parity in treatment of soldiers, it had been a clear-cut decision.

While Monica had been devastated by the news that she could not follow in her father or uncle's footsteps, it did not look like the princess would have similar objections. In fact, it seemed like she was in far too much discomfort to be having anything like Manuel's own reaction to their forced proximity. Such obliviousness from her was as much a wash of cold water onto the virile young soldier as Manuel's happy marriage and their small, if prominent, age gap.

Indeed, while Jeanette had reacted to Manuel's strong body with intense attraction at first, several hours of grueling, tortuous travel through the swamp had mostly stomped that out of her. Now she felt something much like relief at his presence, a relief almost as powerful as her earlier attraction had been. It was immensely comforting to have such competence to support her while she was agonized and completely out of her depth.

She was now far outside the bounds of her education and experience, if not quite beyond what her imagination was capable of conceiving. Without these men supporting her, she'd be long dead, or at least helpless and lost, doomed to starve or die of exposure. Already some had paid the price, although the one that weighed upon her more than any others was that handsome foreign stranger, who'd never held any loyalty to her she could imagine, and who'd died specifically trying to save her and no one else. This Link himself would have denied, pointing toward his loyalty to Monica and his aid to Manuel as the source of his predicament, but Jeanette knew no one to blame but herself.

Thinking of him drew her strained mind to the unexpected keepsake they'd claimed. His pink-purple crystal pendent had come away in Manuel's hand, and he'd entrusted it to her almost undoubtedly as a distraction from the fear of alligators out on the lake. Its leather thong was ripped to shreds, and so she'd tied the tattered remnants into a complex knot around her fingers, cradling the gem in her palm. It was well she'd done so much to ensure her grip on it, then, because out of nowhere, it started to vibrate like nothing Jeanette had ever experienced.

The shock was so great that she let out a peep of surprise and attempted to fling it away by reflex, as though it had bitten her. Manuel was startled out of his own reverie by her reaction, panicking at the thought of his charge falling prey to some poisonous swamp snake. Jeanette recovered from her shock a moment later, quickly retracting her hand as though to cancel the act of tossing the stone away. She started to look around the swamp floor for it automatically, only to realize a moment later that she'd done a better job securing it to her hand than she'd imagined. It hung there now, dangling from her fingers like a glittering spider from a tangled web.

"What's the matter?" Manuel asked, still not sure what was going on. His question answered itself a moment later, when he noticed the stone glowing with its own internal light. He stopped and stared, speechless, and now the both of them were captivated by this accidental souvenir of their rescuer. When it started talking, each of them quite nearly fell over.

"Link, answer me. You're an hour late for your report. I assume you're there, you didn't give the quiet signal and the stone can tell that you're conscious. What's the situation?"

"That's Hylian!" Jeanette commented, momentarily unable to muster anything more articulate than a statement of the obvious. "This necklace is talking to us Manuel!"

"I can see that, although I'm not sure if I believe it! Then again, considering who we got it from…"

"Hello? Who's there?" The necklace switched to Ghentese, shocking the both of them all over again. It was fluently spoken, almost without accent. "I can see you both now, you know. Where's Link? How did you get this pendant?"

"Uh, perhaps Link was that astonishing warrior?" Jeanette guessed. "This must be some kind of magical device! Who do you suppose a man like that would talk to?"

"Yes, yes, you're holding a magical device," the voice from the stone was clearly upset, "Now, either give the stone back to Link or tell me why you can't."

"Madame," Manuel took charge, "I cannot quite believe I am talking to a stone, but I owe this man you refer to quite a debt, so I suppose I also owe his magical rock an explanation. You see… he's dead."

"Oh please," the voice huffed at that solemn proclamation, "I think I would _know_ if he were dead. How exactly did you come to possess this stone? Honestly now, I can tell if you're lying."

"That man, Link, infiltrated the great pyramid in the troll capital city," Jeanette overrode Manuel's attempt to explain. "He slew almost a dozen elite guards and interrupted a magical ritual which was to use us as food for some dreadful old god's manifestation. When the god awoke, he gave combat to it like some great hero from an epic poem of olden days, and actually drove the behemoth away. That was when he said… he said he'd come there to save me. But… before we could escape, the troll sorceress who'd summoned that monstrosity attacked us again. When he stopped to defend us, he was tossed into a bottomless pit. Manuel almost managed to catch him, but in the end, we came away with nothing more than this trinket. I'm sorry, but your Link is gone."

There was silence for a long moment, so long that the fugitives almost gave up on hearing the voice again. Whoever that woman had been, wherever she was communicating from, the news she'd just gotten could not have been pleasant to hear, and neither mourner would have been surprised had she simply given up on her magic stone entirely. She did not.

"So… he did his duty then," the voice was cool and collected, but somehow empty compared to moments ago. "Excellent. I can safely assume that you are Princess Jeanette Orlouge-D'Montaigne, then?"

"What? Uh…" Jeanette looked at Manuel for a cue, but he shrugged. Magic voices were not in his area of expertise, and that made him believe the woman when she'd said she could spot lies. Jeanette seemed to remember that detail too, so she sighed and nodded. "Indeed, I am. However, from what little Link managed to tell me, I suspect I am a princess of nothing but the rags on my back and my own pummeled feet, right this moment."

"Well, if you're willing to listen to my council, I think I might be able to help you with that, actually. It's why I sent Link there to get you, and…" the voice choked up once, but betrayed no deeper emotion, "and we can't let his hard work come to naught."

"How do we know we can trust you, nameless voice?" Manuel asked, pained by the necessity of caution these disastrous circumstances forced.

"Link is… was… very important to me. Does that not at least earn me your ear?" There was the faintest shred of true pain there now, expertly restrained but audible none the less. Feeling truly miserable now, Manuel gave Jeanette a small nod.

"Okay," the young woman said, "I'm listening."

**The Dark Pit beneath The Great Pyramid, The Southern Swamp**

Link left a pile of shattered, ichor-leaking carapaces strewn across the bones and rubble around him and took off before the rising tide of chittering beetles could pile up and swarm him. He wasn't exactly unfamiliar with swarming insects, but he wasn't quite ready to take his chances when they were each a good sixty pounds. Of course, seeing as this was ostensibly a closed pit, he really didn't have a clue what running would do other than buy him a little time. At this point, even only that much was welcome.

A minute later, he was at the far end of the pit and still didn't have any ideas. For some reason, the fact that he was still moving rather than just lying down, waiting to be eaten seemed to have really captured these things' interest. Then again, they weren't at all good at hunting, being rather slow and disorganized. He turned to jog along the edge of the pit and found that they were too stupid to try and cut ahead of him along the shortest path, instead following behind in a curving line.

Their mindlessly relentless pursuit gave Link an idea, and he quickly lit a bomb and dropped in his wake. It gave one deadened bounce before rolling right up to a pile of rocks that leaned against one wall of the pit. The carrion bugs crawled right over it, and it exploded the next moment. The dull thump announced several dozen huge critters being rent into critter-bits, and then there was a sound like a passageway opening. Link's trained ear couldn't help but notice that, and he skidded to a stop as he turned to look into the smoke.

Peering through the cloud of vaporized blasting powder, Link spotted a light source that wasn't his own lamp, and his curiosity bloomed. He'd come to recognize the distinct quality of light given off by ever-burning torches, the magic of which made its way into so many ancient underground complexes, and his heightened intuition was screaming that he'd just stumbled into something incredibly important. He made his way toward that light, butchering a few stray bugs almost absently as he advanced.

When the smoke settled, Link discovered a doorway that had obviously been sealed on purpose. An arch of distinctly old-school design was totally coated in painted masks and skull fetishes, indicating to him that the trolls had discovered this place as well, possibly centuries ago, and had regretted the experience. They'd sealed it up with their magic and then caved in the pit's wall to cover the entrance.

Wondering exactly what he was looking at, Link made a closer examination of the archway under the troll artifacts and the softly lit passageway beyond. The passage behind the arch descended downward into gently lit obscurity and seemed totally untouched by the untold ages it had languished in these dank depths. The polished marble of the stairway reflected Link's lamplight like a mirror and the cut stone walls were devoid of lichen, moss, or even cobwebs. Before answering adventure's irresistible siren call, Link considered the edifice one last time. While he hardly claimed to be an archeologist (although he'd plundered enough ruins to qualify along some definitions) he figured he'd seen enough ancient construction to spot similarities in architecture. Something about this place reminded him vaguely of Monseille, of all places, although only as a great-grandfather resembles his grandson's newborn baby.

There might have been a time when delving into an unknown ruin would have held a measure of apprehension for the young swordsman from a backwater village. He was far, far past that time now, however, and he sidled down the stairs with a confidence that belied his caution. A large part of his mind was preoccupied by searching incessantly for the telltale signs of traps or an ambush, but if this left him nervy or distressed, you couldn't have discovered this by checking his face. Under the subtle glow of his serious, sharp-eyed glare, he was practically smirking.

The stairway led downward without incident, opening into a cramped square chamber devoid of features beyond its torches and a single doorway. If there had been any traps down here, they'd long since been removed. Indeed, there were places where it seemed large mechanisms had been wrenched from the walls and floor, and primitive-looking but doubtlessly effective tools lay strewn about, clean and sharp as the day they'd been abandoned. Link's long ears were tingling, and his nose twitched, and he figured he was probably in the presence of some pervasive form of magic. If he had to guess, it was a spell to protect this place from the ravages of time.

Examining the door, Link found one last array of troll fetishes, the grisly bone sculptures and skull arrangements providing a final warning to any troll who might have, by some impossible circumstance, managed to get down here. Something had certainly distressed the hell out of some lost generation of his hosts' ancestors, and everything that ruled Link's behavior right now told him that he absolutely must investigate what that could be. There was a time when a conflicted Link would have questioned that motivation. Some might say that time wasn't exactly far distant into the past. High on the glorious aftermath of his battle with a giant monster and energized by his recent, multiple brushes with death, Link never mustered the slightest hesitation.

Still cautious in his discreet way for a trap or a sudden burst of magical mischief, Link cleared away the warning markers and confronted the door. It was a heavy stone slab on sliding runners that would let it rise into the wall above it. If it was still functioning, there would be a system of hidden pulleys attached to a counterweight that would make lifting the door a snap. If it had been locked or broken, he might have to get creative.

As it turned out, the trolls that had looted this far had evidently solved the problem of the door so effectively that they'd been unable to seal it properly when they chose to retreat. The moment Link tested the door's weight, he unbalanced whatever had been jamming it into place, and the whole affair rocked forward and tried to crush him. He flipped casually out of the way, and the thud of its impact shook the whole area. In the doorframe, he could still see the shattered mechanisms from where the trolls had originally broken the thing down.

The room beyond glowed. As he stepped in, Link was struck by a sense of awe that had eluded him relentlessly since the day he'd stood on the floor and looked down at clouds, continents, and oceans. Here, now, at last, was a vision to rival the flying city itself, a glittering treasure chamber that glowed stunningly by the golden light cast by a huge chandelier.

The walls were paneled in luscious, dark-stained wood, exhaustively carved and tastefully gilded in silver and gold trim all around; at least where they were not covered by the largest and most detailed tapestries Link had ever laid eyes on. The room was dominated in the center by a monument of white marble with black veins in the shape of a stubby obelisk, polished so thoroughly that it caught the light from the chandelier above, absorbed it, and sent it out again as though it were glowing from within. Racks of weapons of every variety, each and every one a master-crafted work of art in its own right, stood in array to either side of the monument, framing the rectangular block that lay in front of it at the position of focus for the entire room. The rectangle was flanked by two ever-burning torches, and a depiction of a regal woman with a halo holding a sword and shield in a stately pose had been carved into its surface. It was, simply stated, the most elegant, lavish, gorgeous crypt Link had ever imagined.

Link _thought_ he was amazed, and then he saw _it,_ and realized he was just beginning to learn the word's meaning. Embedded into a plinth between the foot of the monument and the head of the coffin cover-slab was a sword. For a brief instant, Link thought he'd gone mad, and had discovered the Master Sword, Holy Relic that Repels Evil, here beneath a troll stronghold in the center of a decrepit swamp two hundred miles from Hyrule's closest border. Then he noticed the subtle differences—its slender blade, elaborate hilt-guard, and the pattern of etchings that danced down its length and formed a blood channel disguised as graceful embellishment. Most tellingly, upon its hilt were arrayed a dozen similar gemstones of various size, dominated by twin diamonds like cat's eyes on its pommel and at the hilt's cross, all of which contained _moving_, pearl-white smoke that gave them a brief resemblance to ghostly opals. Link's instinctive eye for weapons had a wild orgasm, for here was a grand masterwork, an evolution of the simple wedge and lever into the highest and most rare form of true art.

"Nayrue, Farore, and Din!" Link huffed, swallowing hard as he took one unstable stride forward. All the rupees in Malo's coffers could not hope to inspire the sensation of naked avarice that gripped Link's heart as he held out one hand as though to touch the vision of beauty he'd stumbled upon. If he could have reached across the tomb and caressed the blade from where he stood, he would have. As it was, he started as if to walk around the coffin slab and admire the blade close up, only to experience an indescribable thrill of danger the moment he began the motion.

A reflex that he didn't even notice occurring threw him into a bow and half-drew his sword, and then his body was rocked by an impact that rattled his very bones. As he rolled forward and completely drew his weapon, Link realized that he'd just parried an attack that would have beheaded him effortlessly. The lingering vibration in every joint and tendon told him that whatever propelled the blade had _many_ times the strength of a man, and he despaired for a notch in his old Ordon Sword in return for parrying the inhuman blow.

All of that happened before he came back to guard stance, and found that where he'd expected the largest Lizardman to ever walk, or some similar gargantuan foe, there was only a human woman. Or rather, more of a girl, if her five foot, two inch, one-hundred-and-nothing frame was to be believed. Her blond hair fell to her waist in a simple style and her pale skin was mostly hidden by a simple, tight black dress with long sleeves and stockings. She had a stunned look on her face, one that must surely have been mirrored on his own as he utterly failed to comprehend what he'd been met by. In her hand was _the_ sword, and as he checked, unthinkingly taking his eyes off his opponent in his shock, it was indeed missing from the plinth. That defied all reason, as it meant he'd somehow been struck with it from behind while staring at it in front of him.

She said something in Ghentese, apparently talking more to herself than to him. Her voice was as small as her body, and seemed more distant than was possible in this rather small room.

"What?" Link mumbled, arching a brow at her and shrugging from behind his shield and raised sword. None of his surprise had managed to interrupt his instinctive retreat into middle-guard.

She seemed shocked all over again by his response and the way he stared directly at her, and said something else he didn't understand beyond the fact that it was an incredulous inquiry. She actually lowered her weapon and looked down at herself, then back up at Link, continuing to question and comment. Part of Link screamed for him to strike while her guard was down, but for once he was simply too confused to let the impulse rule.

"Listen, lady," Link erred on the side of not belittling the sword-wielding teenager with 'girl' no matter how apparently it fit, "I _don't_ understand what you're saying. For that matter, I gotta wonder how the hell you got down here, and why, in the name of all the goddesses, you felt the need to try and make me a head shorter without even bothering to say hello first."

"Hylian?" The girl said, the first word Link understood. "But of course," she went on, and her accent was thick, but not a _Ghentese_ accent at all, "now that I cast mine eyes, thou dost have the air of a Hylian."

"Well spotted," Link sniped, and his ear twitched. He'd come to trust his instinct for danger, and right now his bowels were doing acrobatic flips in his belly and his heart was trying to stop by his tonsils for a visit. Whoever or whatever this little thing was, she was terrifying him on a level far more fundamental than the normal senses could perceive.

"I must have this knowledge from thine own lips, interloper," the girl said, deadly serious as her blade rested easily in a relaxed guard, "Dost thine eyes truly see me? Dost thine ears truly hear me? The preponderance of evidence suggests as much, but truthfully I had quite abandoned mine hope."

"Well, actually, it's my ears that see you and my eyes that are hearing you, but a lot of people make that mistake, so don't take it too hard." The sarcasm was thick on his tongue, and the girl had evidently heard enough.

"Thou hast wit," she admitted, and saluted with her sword before dropping back to a relaxed position, "but, methinks thou dost not perceive the balance of this circumstance."

Without moving her feet, she swung the blade through a gentle arc. Link anticipated it as a wide, horizontal slash, but it left a glittering trail in the air, and the before he could be amazed, a gentle tingling sensation passed through his arms and chest. The load on his body unbalanced in an explosion of motion, and all of Link's equipment clattered to the ground, the harness supporting it disintegrating along several fine cuts. Behind him, his full cloak became a half cloak, a look Link had always considered quite pansy-assed, with the cut appearing along the same line as the cuts in his gear harness. When the noise of settling equipment stopped, Link was already rushing her.

Link's ingrained reaction to danger was not to freeze, it was to charge. He knew it was a bad idea, he _knew_ it. This was not a situation where getting the drop on his opponent was going to change much of anything, and discretion would have been very much the preferred path. Hell, as he closed in on the sword-wielding doll, her gentle sneer suggested that he hadn't even managed to _get_ the drop on her, because people rarely looked contemptuous while they were stunned. He knew it all, but he couldn't help himself. He just _had_ to fight.

Fortunately, the mystery girl was currently more interested in interrogating him than slicing him into prime cuts, and did not reproduce her impossible sword technique to bifurcate him as he charged. When Link arrived, he feinted and then stabbed for the heart, and his sword connected soundly, but passed right through her body like she was no more substantial than mist. Completely unbalanced by her failure to be solid flesh like a respectable opponent, Link spun right through her and turned to present another guard. She didn't just stand there and wait for him, though, she took her ability to ghost through him to maximum effect, spinning with him, practically inside of him, and arriving inside of his guard, pressed close as a lover as he turned around, her _very_ _solid_ sword's razor edge poised at his throat as she looked up from his chest level.

"Please cease this meaningless—" She started to chide him coldly, before she realized that he'd never even _considered_ hesitating in fear for his life. Link supposed he might actually have surprised her this time, because he had time enough to pinch her blade between his shield and sword before she could twitch and give him a red smile. There again, she'd probably simply spared him a second time. Anyway, he thrust his arms up and rotated in a wide circle that plaid against her lesser stature, reaching a critical point quickly and flicking the blade across the room.

He was about to confront the specter again on different terms, when he realized she'd evaporated into smoke the second he'd separated her from the sword. Or rather, he realized as he looked over to find her across the room, she'd gone with the sword when he tossed it, as though she were a weightless ribbon attached to its hilt. She recovered from her sprawl with as much dignity as possible while Link stood stock still, too perplexed to imagine another way to attack.

"'Twas an ill-advised act, Cur," she told him, turning back to hold out the thin blade in a stance that kept it pointed at him, arm and blade horizontal with the ground. He brought up his own guard, the bitter taste of helplessness stinging his throat, and prepared himself for whatever might come next.

In a gentle, almost limp-wristed motion, she lowered her blade to her toes and lifted it with an arcing flick that ended with it pointing away above her head. Link anticipated the effect and flipped to the side, a wave of invisible force three feet thick slapping the wall from floor to ceiling in his wake, striking so hard that it crushed the wood paneling and revealed the bare stone beneath. The room shook, and the girl pursued him by pivoting on her heel, a subtle smile playing on her lips.

She tossed two more waves of force from her blade, this time so quickly that Link could only see the glittering after image. His instinct forced him to jerk still as a pair of crushing waves impacted on either side, penning him in. She caught him flat-out, and her sword became a blur. He saw a sparkling blossom appear on the air to trace where it had passed, and he lifted his shield and sword, defending his vitals by reflex. There was a burning flash over his skin, and then he went numb. When, instead of crumbling into a collection of steak-slices and chunky bowels, he actually recovered feeling, Link uncovered his eyes.

He stood up, feeling quite untouched, and once again raised his guard. Right about then, his sword and shield crumbled into perfectly sheered metal slivers. He was left holding a hilt in one hand and two straps in the other. Link found himself staring at the shattered remnant of his Ordon sword, speechless. Taking this to mean she'd finally scared the fight out of him, the girl let her blade fall back to a resting position and gave him a measuring look.

"Art thou prepared to talk civilly, now?" she asked.

"I was going to keep that sword as an heirloom!" Link complained loudly, flinging the useless hilt aside in annoyance. His tone had shifted into a lighter, more relaxed phase almost seamlessly, and he had to stop and evaluate things all over again before he figured out why.

The truth was that he no longer sensed that air of extreme danger—somewhere in the process of that tussel, the entity's unparalleled killer intent had evaporated, and he'd been so worked up about the fight that he hadn't even noticed. With that off his back, he was left feeling quite a bit more reasonable, if somewhat distraught about his eradicated gear. Also, it occurred to him that he'd been utterly defeated, although that didn't particularly bug him. It wasn't as though there had been anything at stake, since apparently his life had not been in danger for some time. That didn't mean stakes wouldn't become apparent now, of course, because he was effectively at this being's mercy.

"Uh, yeah, okay mysterious lady who might be a ghost, I'm listening. I can hear you and see you… although we've found that I can't touch you, clearly."

"Don't be _absurd_!" the girl seemed genuinely offended now, glowering at Link with new force, "I am not some forlorn ghost, clinging to this world beyond a mortal coil! I'll thank thee to remember the distinction, if thou dost wish to keep thine hide."

"How do I know you can even use that technique to attack me?" Link complained, loosing much of his sense of caution now that he'd escaped that threatening aura. In a sense he was still annoyed about his equipment, but he was also terribly interested in that sword technique. He'd analyzed it as thoroughly as possible from merely visual information, and concluded that it had components of both magic and mundane skill. That he probably wouldn't be able to master it himself didn't make it any less fascinating.

"Know, wastrel, that thou dost live on mine sufferance alone," the young woman said, and now her smile became arrogant and slightly cruel, "and I didst anticipate thine desire for proof of such a truth."

Link felt a sudden sting on his cheek, and swatted at it absently, his fingers coming away coated in blood. Another small gash spurted open on his shoulder and thigh moments later, and he winced, feeling a thrill as his suspicions about that sword technique were confirmed. She could have made him into cold cuts, if she'd felt like it. Whatever had prompted her restraint, he owed his life to.

"Well, you certainly have my attention," Link allowed, ignoring the smarting cuts seeping blood all over his filthy armor. "Sorry if I seemed a little belligerent before, I don't take well to attempted decapitation."

"And I feel not a shred of native sympathy for grave robbers," she retorted, resting the tip of her sword on the ground and hanging both hands upon it. In a superficial way, she resembled the woman's image carved upon the heavy coffin casing, less the shield and about twenty years. If she wasn't a ghost, Link was at a loss to what she actually might be.

"I'm not a grave robber—" Link began, and then recalled the many graves he'd looted, albeit for a good cause. "Or rather, I didn't come _here_, to _this_ grave, with the intent to rob it. I mean, who would go looking for the grave of… um…" he gave a casual glance at the monument and tapestries, taking in the general theme, "Some lady swordsman, in a place like _this_? Chance brought me to your door, stranger, and after that I was just plain curious."

"I care not for thine excuses, thief," the sword bearer dismissed his explanation, "the subject at hand is thine ability to perceive mine presence! It doth not be outside the usual for the unwashed multitude to interact with me, as thou didst demonstrate with great courage when thou didst risk thine life in so cavalier a fashion, merely to toss me aside. Less common by far are those that hear mine voice. She could," the girl gestured at the grave, "but that happy partnership hast been history well forgotten since the time of thine ancestors, Hylian."

"Yeah, uh, I get the sense she was important," Link admitted, taking another look around the sumptuous, if now somewhat destroyed tomb. "But I must admit, I haven't a clue who I've found. I mean, I'm a long way from home, and I don't even know Hylian history that well, much less Ghentese."

"Her name," the girl stated, solemn now and heavy with the weight of memory, "was Jean Orleans. During the Great Troll Wars of four hundred-odd years past, she didst become far better known as 'The Lady Hero,'—or as such it wouldst sound in thine tongue. Mine old, dear friend, died of a wasting illness in this thrice-accursed swamp, and her allies didst choose to mark her tomb at the place wherefore she didst fall. I was lain to rest beside her, for none then were worthy of me as she was. To compact my own tale of protracted boredom, the swamp didst swallow this monument, and we lay in peace until the trolls didst rediscover us beneath their very toes. I made that filth regret the encounter, but even that bout of excitement is a century gone, now. Thou art mine first visitor in an age, and that thou art worthy to perceive me suggests to mine better judgment that the hand of fate dost move here."

"I would really like to know who you are," Link said, although he had an idea, an inkling that really didn't appeal to him at all. "What kind of being can survive a half a thousand years locked in a tomb? Hell, just how old _are_ you, lady?"

"Mind thy tongue, Cur!" She snapped, but she didn't bother raising her sword. "I bore many names down these ages; of how many I weathered thou need not concern thyself. _Bijou Blanc_, they didst call me of late, but I despise that title. I have a name I give unto the worthy, and thou might use it as well. Arrika is the name mine father gave to me."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Arrika. They call me Link." Link bowed, taking a chance to frown at his suspicions as he did. At this point he was virtually certain, but he was willing to wait for her to spell it out. Best he just kept his manners up as long as she wasn't trying to dismember him.

"Charmed," she saluted him with her sword again, then slipped it into a reversed grip and tucked it up behind her arm so that the tip just peeked over her shoulder. "Now, to continue upon the course we didst begin previously, I am most unsettled to discover that thou art able to see me. Such a person as thee I hath not encountered in so _very_ long. Even Jean was most decided upon the idea that mine disembodied voice came from her goddess."

"To be honest," Link said, growing impatient, "I can't say that I was expecting to meet anything like you, Arrika. A sentient sword is a little on the fantastic side, even by my warped standards."

The instant the words were out, Link knew he shouldn't have said them. Arrika's beautiful young face creased with the most thunderous scowl she'd yet shown, and the sword flicked out again. He took one step back and began to backpedal verbally as well when she suddenly sprang across the room like a shot. Link's battle instinct had him raise his right arm, braced with his left, and a bloom of pain crackled through it as he caught the blow meant for his head. The clang of the blade striking his armored gauntlets rang out like a bell, and left a dent.

Because she'd used only the flat of the blade, he only felt his arm wash with cold numbness as it accepted the blow. Link had a flashing vision of her face, her anger tempered by respect for his reflexes, before she reversed in a blur he couldn't have hoped to follow. She brought the sword through a roundhouse and slapped him across the face with the flat so hard that he was pitched head over heels to the side, landing on the cold marble floor in a heap of armor. He'd had no hope of blocking that follow-up, but some goddess-sent twitch reflex had allowed him to roll with the blow, and while his jaw bloomed with pain and a bruise, he managed to keep all his teeth. All things considered, it was an astonishing performance.

"I hath been dubbed a mere _speaking_ _sword_ more times than I care to recount," Arrika explained, her voice suffused by barely-restrained rage, "so listen thee now and listen well. Accept that blow, and let the sting serve to remind thee of this: thou art in the presence of a High Lady, Arrika lo dim Rospalcino sert Belturgolo. I am of the Sword Maidens, and I wilt have thine respect, or I wilt claim thine head."

"Noted," Link said, but with respect as he regained his feet and checked his jaw tenderly for fractures. "Accept my apology, Lady Arrika." Link immediately proceeded to cross the room and begin the process of collecting his equipment for a strategic retreat. This bitch was crazy, and when you add power to crazy, you don't mess with the results without reason. This nut had already cost him his sword and shield, and it was past time to cut his losses. "And now, apology given," he stated as he lifted his bundled items into his arms, "I think I'll be on my way. It's been a real… interesting encounter, My Lady, but I feel as though I've worn out my welcome."

"Stop or die," She said, not looking at him. Link winced, but set his bundled harness of equipment back on the ground and sat on it, sighing deeply. For a moment, he'd really thought it could be that easy.

"Is there something more I can do for you, then?" Link asked. He managed not to sound sarcastic or exasperated, which was quite a feat, considering his mood.

"Did I not say that thou art peculiar in thine ability see and hear me?" she said, hinting at quite as much as Link had feared, "Thou wilt stay while I gauge thine true worth. If I discover in thee sufficient merit, thou shalt carry me from this tomb."

"Okay," Link said, crooking his head skeptically and gritting his teeth. "Well, while I'll be the first to admit I was caught up by your craftsmanship and the aura of power you emit, I've kinda reconsidered things since that poor first impression you made. I can't say I'm terribly _willing_ to wield the blade you inhabit at this point, Lady Arrika."

"Filth!" she snapped, aghast at such an outright rejection, "Cur!" She knew that he understood weaponry and its relative quality—that was part in parcel of what it took to perceive her true nature—and for such a connoisseur to simply cast aside the prize that was her struck at her pride like nothing else. Her sword was at his throat in a flash, its point actually drawing a bead of blood as it gave him a nasty razor cut. Link grimaced at her, then pulled away without fear and began to sort through what of his harness he wasn't sitting on. He quickly retrieved a needle and strong thread, along with his other leather patching supplies. Soon he was engrossed in repairing what she'd severed, ignoring her completely.

"What art thou doing?" she snapped, livid, and yet failing to follow through on her threatening postures. Link finished patching one strap and went to the next, only for his work to be instantly undone by the tiniest flick of Arrika's wrist. "Thou shalt answer when spoken to, Cur!" Her blade was once again at his throat, this time poised across it and ready to saw him open.

"First of all, I'm not a dog, so stop calling me 'Cur,'" Link said, shoving her blade aside boldly and finding no resistance in her grip. "My name is Link, Lady Arrika. _Link_. And I've had to deal with the imperious type all too often in the past, so _you_ really don't impress me at all. I'm leaving now, and you can either apologize for attacking me while I was unarmed, and then keep a civil tongue, or you can watch me leave. Or, I suppose you could kill me, if you're interested in gutting the first fellow to hear you in four hundred years, or see you in goddesses know how long. That's every bit your call, you know. But, if you think I'm going to sit here and take your abuse, simply because I should be grateful to be in your presence at all, you've got another think coming, _My_ _Lady_."

Link had been mending constantly while he spoke, and now he stood and hefted all his equipment back onto his back, removing his halved cloak in the process so it would not dangle girlishly over his load. Arrika was silent, divided unreservedly between opposing pillars of pride and desperation. It was all too clear to Link now that, while she could move freely in this tomb for some reason, she could not leave unless it was on the back of someone 'worthy.' He couldn't imagine _why_ that was true, but her behavior screamed it to the world, and that shifted the balance of power here entirely to his side.

While she was an intriguing artifact, and quite simply the most beautiful sword he'd ever laid eyes on, he wasn't about to put up with a whole new Midna if he could avoid it. Especially considering the fact that _this_ imperious freeloader had next to no chance of transforming into a voluptuous woman at some point in the future. He loved fine weaponry, but this was not something he was just going to rush into from a disadvantaged position.

"If thou wouldst leave without me, then so be it!" Arrika chose pride over freedom, stalking away and sliding herself, the sword, into the plinth once more. She gave Link a parting dirty look before her young woman's body evaporated. As he shrugged in the plinth's direction and walked away, Link found that he was actually disappointed. Why was that? He thought about it as he stepped out into the outer chamber, ignoring the fallen door as beneath his effort to replace. The conclusion he came to was simply that he liked fine weapons _that_ _much_, but in truth, there might have been an element, a tiny grain at least, of genuine guilt. He was abandoning a thinking, sentient person to probably eternal entombment.

That guilt, however much he denied it, was what inclined him to drag his feet as he made his way up the long stairway. So it was that just as he reached the top of the stairs and was about to reintroduce himself to any lingering carrion bugs with his bow, he stopped in his tracks as a call echoed up the stairway.

"LINK! WAIT, PLEASE! I beg of thee, Link, WAIT! For the love of all the gods and goddesses, do not abandon me here! PLEASE, DON'T GO!" The final wail was particularly pathetic as it trailed into nothingness, and Link paused on the last stair. He felt conflict rage in his guts and in his mind, and in his heart as well. In the end, he was just a sucker for a hard luck case, apparently, because he went walking down the stairs.

When he reached the bottom, he found Arrika collapsed at the doorway, one hand leaning on her sword as she knelt in prostrate despair, the other pressed against the open air of the door like it was a solid wall. Her blond hair spilled around her, concealing her face as she quietly wept. The tears fell visibly, but did not moisten the stones below. She seemed to notice as he exited the stairwell, and looked up in genuine surprise to find him back again.

"Thou didst return?" she mumbled, totally shocked.

"I dropped my whistle," Link said, pointing to a spot roughly halfway between the tomb door and the stairwell. Indeed, there was the whistle Ilia had carved for him, perfectly formed to emulate the wild horse-grass whose call Epona so loved. Link would never have admitted that he possibly dropped the whistle on purpose, subconsciously even, in case the being entwined with the beautiful sword should happen to leap at a second chance to be civil.

"Link, wait, please!" Arrika snapped, as he collected his trinket and turned to leave again with consummate indifference to the girl's despairing state. "I… I apologize. Twas honorless for me to strike at an unarmed opponent who, and even worse one who didst pose to me no threat. Wouldst thou give me a chance, at the least? Perhaps mine hopes are for naught, and thou could not wield me besides, but… but…" She trailed off, her desperation naked on her face. Link couldn't stand to be the one who left a woman in such a state, not after he got the apology he'd required, and he relented with a nod. Arrika looked ready to break into a whole new series of tears, but instead she simply sprang up in an impossible motion and hopped away, light as a feather, to make room for Link's return to the tomb.

"What exactly must I do for you to check my 'merit?'" Link asked, actually rather interested now. He was essentially _determined_ to carry Arrika out of here weather or not he was technically supposed to be _capable_ of it, and the sooner he learned the terms, the sooner he could cheat, should that be necessary.

"Thou hast already demonstrated a keen warrior's head and fine skills. One could hardly expect a mere mortal to stand up to a Sword Maiden in a place as thoroughly invested with her power as this tomb hast been with mine. Thou didst pass that test when thou dist manage to prevent mine hasty attempt to assassinate a trespasser."

"Well, I've always had a knack for swordsmanship," Link admitted, allowing himself the slightest hubris, "and I had a few excellent teachers. After that it was a great deal of real-life experience. So what else makes a warrior worthy of a…a Sword Maiden?"

"Courage," Arrika said, "but that trait too is already clear—thou didst fight without the fear of death as no warrior I have ever encountered."

"Right, so, moving on?" Link glossed forward. Doubtless there would be time enough to discuss the Triforce power melded into his soul. Old as this being seemed to be, she probably knew more about it than he did.

"Answer me this question, Link," Arrika posed seriously, dedicated to this strange ritual of acceptance. "_Why_ dost thou live thine life by the sword?"

"Well, I…" Link began immediately, but then stopped as the true depth of that question caught up with him. "Give me a minute on that one, My Lady," he requested, delving into deep thought.

"Surely," Arrika responded in bemused resignation, "for what torment art minutes when I hast waited centuries already? Try not to disappoint with your answer, Link. Age hast not rendered my heart unbreakable, as thine cruel test hast shown already." She lapsed to silence, seating herself and propping the sword between her legs, resting her chin upon its hilt.

Why did he fight? Here again Link met with the incredible cleft in his heart that had plagued him so relentlessly. Part of him felt no particular reason to fight at all, except for the necessity of defending what he valued. Another part of him drank combat like a drug, thriving on the life-and-death thrill that brought one so close to pure, unfettered self-awareness. Which of those aspects was truly him? Were they both? Was neither? Without some real idea of what he'd been like, truly been like, before the Triforce had possessed him for his divine mission, he would never, ever know for certain. Failing to find his personal, singular truth, he cheated. He rolled all his answers together.

"In this world, there are people and ideals I wish to protect, and the threats that face them know no language but violence," Link began. "But… I'd be lying if I said I went to those battles reluctantly. Combat is its own joy, an expression of life through mortal competition, and swordplay is a skill like any other, something that one can take joy and pride in mastering. Basically, I keep my cause righteous by confronting those opposed to my loved ones and our values, and then work the job that I love, doing what I do very well. I… know that's not much of an answer but…"

"Enough, Link, desist," Arrika waved away his attempt to qualify, which began when he saw her deepening frown of concern. "I simply worry that thou hast somehow divined the question's answer unfairly, and now seek to cheat the inquiry. Thou dost seek to defend and preserve, not invade, thieve, and destroy. Thou dost celebrate life, not glorify in massacre. And finally, thou dost pursue the sword as its own reward, rather than as a means to an end. These art the three features of a warrior of quality, a worthy one."

"R-Really?" Link was shocked by this one, hardly expecting to pass with such a wishy-washy answer. Apparently it wasn't necessary to have an overwhelming, clear-cut purpose, so long as your heart was in the right place. It was a qualification policy he approved of, for all too often the end was used to justify the darkest of means, and here he'd found someone who judged on what _he_ considered to be the important features—policy unburdened by goals.

"There is a final decider, Link," Arrika said, and the excitement bloomed back into her expression. Apparently she had no doubt he could pass this one, or was otherwise bewitched by some secret emotion regarding the final test. "Thou hast but to take this sword, _mine_ sword, and hold it vaulted above thine head. Do this, and the magic will re-align to thine soul, and we shalt begin a new chapter in mine history."

"Oh, is that all?" Link asked, half-joking. It seemed a silly ritual, but most of this had made little sense. At this point, he was brimming with the anticipation of wielding her sword, his combat-hypersensitive imagination conjuring scenes of incredible swordplay with this glorious blade prominently featured. In his carelessness, he'd glossed right over words like 'magic' and 'soul,' perhaps unwisely.

In a simple gesture, the Sword Maiden reversed her grip on the hilt and offered it freely, still smiling. "Do be cautious," she warned in a parting mumble, "Should thou drop the blade, the test is failed. Twill be no second attempt—such is impossible."

If Link had still been listening to his native caution, he would have heard it shouting about the snicker just barely suppressed by that smile on her face. As it was, he felt an unsettling bout of unfocused worry as he gripped the offered hilt. Why exactly that was, he never bothered to worry about, because, hey, there was no sense of danger whatsoever.

Now, Arrika was, for all visual purposes, a tiny little slip of a girl. Her skin-tight, but still conservative and Spartan dress hid a body that, had it possessed substance, could not have weighed a hundred pounds. She handled her sword, that beautiful, delicate-looking sword, like it was a feather. Psychologically, Link had every reason to expect her sword to be light as a toothpick. The joke was on him.

Link took the sword from Arrika's hand, and instantly the tip hit the ground like a falling guillotine, chopping a hunk of marble out of the floor. The hilt _almost_ escaped Link's grip. It _almost_ rocketed to the floor like an anvil and crushed his foot, to be precise. However, by those same reflexes that saved his life and let him hold his own in a completely uneven battle, Link somehow managed to keep his fingers wrapped around the terrifically heavy blade. It dragged his whole body forward until he was bent like an old man, but he held it, his teeth clenched and his eyes bulging almost comically wide.

"Oh my," Arrika was giggling uncontrollably as she saw him struggle. A gossamer thread connected her to her sword, allowing her to exist visibly while separate from its touch. She made an attempt to quell her amusement for appearance's sake, but mostly she just laughed in Link's face as he bowed under the blade's unnatural weight. "Accept mine apologies, Link, for I too doth lay claim to some small wit."

With that, Link realized he'd fallen into some kind of trap. Just what kind, he wasn't sure, but Arrika was suddenly quite talkative, and he began to realize just what was happening as she spoke.

"Thou must understand, Link. I was laid to rest here, not because Jean's compatriots lacked covetous intentions in their small hearts, but because none were worthy to face the ceremony of binding, and thus encountered me as thou dost now at their every attempt to wield me. They argued most bitterly over who might inherit me, only to discover that I was most intractable in their unworthy paws."

As she spoke, Link could almost see the events happening in his mind, even distracted as he was by the weight trying to rip his fingers out. A gaggle of armored men were gathered in a heated argument outside a tent where Jean Orleans lay dead. Some bargain was struck, and then there was their fiery bitterness and embarrassment as the sword rejected each in turn. Just as the master sword required various proofs of the virtues of the three goddesses before it could be used to defeat evil, this Sword Maiden required some inherent trait of its wielder, apparently one that also involved the ability to see or hear her voice. Now things were finally becoming clear. Link had been suckered beautifully.

"An unclaimed Sword Maiden," Arrika went on, "is sealed to its previous contractor until a worthy arrives to re-bind the magic of the covenant. I lay unclaimed after Jean's death, but none were worthy, and none could initiate the ceremony to bind me anew, and so I lay with mine departed companion, waiting for one who could do what those there could not. Only after weathering the binding shall a worthy warrior wield the sword unhindered by the seal of its previous partner. In turn, until that warrior's death and the arrival of a new claimant, all but he who attempts to wield it will face the same difficulty thou dost now struggle against."

"You're tellin' me _she_ lifted _this_?" Link nodded toward the tomb as he huffed for air and struggled to organize his body strength while simultaneously battling to hold onto the hilt. Odd that after all that, this was the first thing that occurred to him, but it was the plain truth. If he had to guess, the sword must weigh in the realm of four hundred pounds, at least, all concentrated into three and a half feet of delicate-looking metal. If Link, with his toned-to-the-limit body, was having this much trouble, he couldn't imagine some woman managing to bind it.

"Indeed, though the effort nearly slew her, and didst break four of her fingers," Arrika assured him, and then stepped back, her amusement giving way to strained nerves as she waited for him to pass or fail this final barrier to her freedom. "Thou must endeavor to comprehend," She explained with a much more solemn tone, "it doth not require strength of _muscle_ to wield such a blade as I. True, the seal dost attempt to break the grip of the _unworthy_ with impossible weight, but for a claimant such as thee, Link, a Sword Maiden's primary weight doth be utterly _metaphysical_. What thou dost feel is the strain upon thine body as mine magic makes a home inside thee. Thine arms shall never hold the strength to lift the blade until thine soul has accepted the covenant."

"I didn't sign up for all this!" Link complained, as he contemplated releasing the blade. No act of charity for a stranger, and certainly no fancy-pants sword, was worth literally breaking his back, not to mention he'd hardly been expecting such ado and circumstance as a 'covenant' to be involved in his new acquisition.

The moment he contemplated giving up, his danger sense blazed in his mind. For a moment, he thought he might be anticipating a homicidal reaction from her should he fail. Then he recognized that the actual act of dropping the blade was what set it off. "Arrika," Link asked past clenched teeth, "there wouldn't happen to be some _reason_ 'claimants' don't ever get a second chance after dropping the blade, would there?"

"Oh…" she looked away, suddenly reluctant to face him, "to drop the blade would abort the binding's influence on the soul most rudely. Tis a most _fatal_ discourtesy."

"You see, _that's_ a detail you mention up front!" Link shouted, putting his back into his effort with new energy now that his life was on the line. "I am pretty damn upset with you right now!"

"I gladly risk thine ire, Link," she told him, although she sounded rather crushed, as though she were far more reluctant than she let on. "Mine freedom doth be far too important to me. Tis in the past now either way, thou must complete the ceremony, binding me unto death, or die where thou dost stand now. Such is the _only_ choice I could risk allowing thee."

"If I survive this, I am _totally_ using you to scrape my feet!" Link threatened, quite off-hand as he wrestled the unreal weight in his hands. "Don't think you won't be seeing use for wood-chopping or kabob-roasting either, because after this, _anything_ goes!"

"Ah," Arrika seemed to pale, and Link realized his half-joking, half-panicked threats had actually hit home somehow. Apparently whatever detailed sense of honor the entity ascribed to would prevent her from complaining at such treatment after she'd plaid such a filthy trick on him. Pride resurfaced, along with no small measure of desperation and a tiny flicker of contrition. "Now that thou dost mention such details, I truthfully recall certain hints that will ease the binding process without tainting it. Perhaps such would be an apology to restore mine honor in thine eyes?"

"Are you _kidding_?" Link couldn't conceive that her pride was so great that it let her consider even _this_ moment as a time for bargaining for advantage. "If I fail, you're trapped here again! Tell me now!"

"I am a _Sword_ Maiden!" She seemed to feel this was incredibly important point, "I would sooner be broken on the forge than serve the role of a brutish axe or common dagger! Claimants hath struggled most bitterly for numerous hours before discovering what I can offer thee in a breath. I am most willing to bend the rules and ease thine binding, but only should thou be accommodating in this!"

Link's mind boggled at this whole insane situation, but then he stopped trying to fit it into his world-view and just accepted it—the exact same defense-mechanism that had allowed him to deal with the reality of multiple dimensions, the active intervention of the gods, and enormous, world-bending magics after a farm boy's upbringing. Considering the inherent practicalities, he was faced with either giving this the full hours of effort, perhaps risking death, and in return getting the satisfaction of holding Arrika's broken honor over her in revenge, or easing his way through this whole blighted process and calling it even with her for roping him in to so much more than he'd bargained for. For a moment, he thought he might go right ahead and just be _that_ petty, but then he came to his senses.

"Deal," he told her, and she brightened immediately. "_I'll_ let bygones be bygones and overlook your trickery, and _you_ tell me how to lift this damn thing!"

"The key is subtle, and thus most difficult to divine on one's own," Arrika told him, seeming relieved on several different levels. The whole process of roping him in and trapping him with his own kindness seemed to have weighed on her behind her cool façade, and the pardon he'd just bargained back to her was a load off her soul. "As I hast mentioned, the lifting of the sword doth represent the binding in action within. In return, to lift the sword is to cause the binding to take hold. It is not a weight one's back can hope to heft, for it is not a weight of metal at all. As I did hint before, it is a _spiritual_ weight. To shift it, thou must exert thine _character_."

"Oh please! That's—" Link was just about to dismiss her words as a poor joke when the advice struck him in the instincts with hammer force. Suddenly what he had to do was so clear, he couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of it himself, exactly as most of the simplest secret tricks do, in retrospect. "That's so _obvious_! How could I not have _seen_ it?"

Link gathered his wits, and then focused his thoughts on the sensation he'd felt when he stared down Big Moblin for Colin's sake. He called to mind the solemn victories against half a dozen twilight-spawned titans. He collected his every agonized memory of how he'd dealt with Gannon's warped and hateful machinations, and of the terrible battle that had finally disposed of the madman. And of course, he remembered the women who'd seen fit to favor him, although he had little clue how he would ever resolve the questions their very existence raised.

Courage was easy to gather, as it had been so easy to muster in every other situation he'd faced, and perseverance mingled with duty in its shadow. The desire to protect was also a simple matter, and on its heels came love of family, commitment, and loyalty. Finally, kindness came to call, although it was flanked by discipline and honor, as always.

And, as Link held those virtues in his mind's eye and in his heart, the sword's unbelievable weight faded away. He lifted the blade from the stones, and suddenly it was just another sword, if gorgeous and eminently fine of edge. He gave it a sample twirl, as he was prone to, and elevated it above his head the next moment. Arrika looked as though her jaw was about to pop out of its socket and clatter to the marble floor, so shocked was she to see his victory. Just that much was practically worth whatever binding magical contract he'd just blundered into, and whatever resentment he might have felt became a feeble, almost comical thing.

"So, now that _that's_ taken care of, I have some _real_ work to do," Link joked, turning to walk out of the tomb. Arrika found her voice before he reached the room's threshold, and asked him to stop. Link ignored her, mostly just to jerk her chain, and she suddenly appeared between him and the exit with her arms spread out to block his way. Now, he was listening.

"None hath ever completed the binding so quickly in all mine years," she said, as though this was a monumental achievement. "Not even by half—not even by a quarter—I thought such a thing most impossible!"

"Well, what can I say?" Link was still teasing her, mostly because that's how he'd come to treat his true companions after being abused by Midna so often. "I suppose I just have more character than your average stiff. Once you opened my eyes, lifting the sword was easy. So just kick back and relax already, would ya? I've still got to free-climb my way out of a hundred-odd foot oubliette and ex-filtrate from a city of cannibalistic humanoid fiends that's just been stirred to wartime readiness. You know, a Sunday walk in the park, give or take a giant monster or two."

Link had meant most of that as little more than playful boasting, but then realized just how true it had become. What did you call it when the impossible became the routine? Whatever it was, it was his life in a word, and he was starting to find himself concerned for what new plateau this march of the crazy-insane-dangerous would reach now that he was officially accustomed to these already absurd levels.

"Thou art jesting, surely?" Arrika, despite being the guardian and personification of some kind of astounding magical artifact, still seemed put off by Link's cavalier attitude toward a life of uncommon adventure. Clearly she didn't believe him, so he just shrugged at her mysteriously. "Jesting aside, you must know two small details before we part."

"Wait, are you going somewhere?" Link was confused anew, because he'd been rather sure all that hoopla he'd just navigated had been meant to secure her freedom, and him a new weapon.

"Nay, we shall not be parting until death, if thou dost recall. Yet, already mine magic leaves these stones to resettle in thee. It will be inaccessible until such a time as it has begun to develop within thine form. Already mine manifestation fades," and it was true, she looked as insubstantial as she'd already proven to be now, "but I will return to educate you on the power thou hast claimed, in good time."

"What was the other detail?"

The sword jerked in Link's hand, reaching out and stabbing at a bit of the filigree over the broken doorframe. There was the sound of a switch depressing, the slow creaking of hidden mechanisms within the wall, and then the grinding of stone on stone from behind. The obelisk monument had split open to reveal a shady hollow in the floor, unmistakably a sacred grove

"A gift," Arriaka said, drawing his attention back to her, "to thee, my new associate. I hath waited centuries to give it. Beyond doth lie a grotto wherein resides a portal that shall take thee into the sunlight, no matter how distant above it might have receded. Until later," she winked at him, and then dissolved into shimmering mist shaped vaguely like a person. The mist swirled, compacted, and then flew into the hilt of the sword, staining the clear diamonds, including the brilliant twin stones that dominated the motif, with a smoky white tinge that continued to swirl magically within them.

The room was suddenly very, very quiet. Link, who'd assumed he'd acquired yet another chatty, yet insubstantial female companion, was disappointed with himself for being somewhat relieved that she _could_ vanish. Now that she was gone, the magical quality of the air was fading, and instead, the magical quality of the sword itself seemed to balloon incredibly under his grip. The tomb faded, riches and finery seeming to gain centuries of wear in seconds, and Link recognized what had made it so extraordinary in the first place was now invested in him, instead.

The sacred grove was as lush as any he'd ever stumbled across in Hyrule, and no sooner had he fallen into it than did the sun portal open behind him. Apparently it didn't matter how deep they were dug, as long as they were magical enough. Before he left to take his chances with wherever the portal spat him out again, Link raised Arrika's sword for one last examination. Bijou Blanc was what the ancient Ghentese had called it. He gave it an experimental swing, finding its balance to be as perfect as he'd predicted the moment he'd first seen it, but failing to cause a swathe of destruction along the arc it described.

With a sigh, Link slid the blade into the sheathe previously occupied by his old Ordon Sword, finding it an intolerably loose fit, and pledged to order a customized, luxury housing for it at the first opportunity. His last thought on the matter, before he turned his mind to his uncertain future, was that it would be terribly disappointing if he could never learn that technique for himself.

**Reanalds Mansion, Ordon Province**

Zelda closed the connection on her whispering stone at last, having both secured the cooperation and trust of Princess Jeanette, and guided them past what dangers she could with the limited powers she could cast across the connection. When the purple-pink gem was silent and her room was dark but for the dawn creeping in under the blinds, only then did she face what she'd learned some hours past.

The idea that Link was dead was impossible, and so she didn't really give it much thought. Of course, she couldn't really keep the tears from misting up and dripping down her face, but really, there was nothing to that. The only death that could possibly claim that man was that slow end which crept on the wings of time, or so she stalwartly believed. Bearing it out to be true was Link's job, and she had faith he would manage handsomely when it came to rising to the task.

And so, she allowed herself some tears of fear, releasing the pressure of so much to deal with, so much on her shoulders, and such terrible stakes. And then it was time for her wake-up call, and she had to put all of that away and present the face of the Monarch. There was no rest, no reprieve, only duty.

**Second Full Revision Notes**

This chapter more or less marks the point where my desire to experiment with plot devices I wanted to try out fully diverged from the Legend of Zelda universe's ability to provide logical circumstances to employ them. As many people have commented, around this point, the story is basically an original fiction with enough names and places from the series sprinkled about to qualify it for this section on the ffnet.

This was another of my favorite chapters, but my regrets about it are manifold in retrospect. Most prominently, I regret attempting old-timey sounding English. I managed to be neither convincing nor internally consistent in the first edition, and even this revised version isn't great. I even thought about removing it completely in this version, but eventually decided that would be more trouble than it was worth. Other than that, Arrika really identifies herself with the sword too much in her dialogue and actions, especially considering my efforts, even at this early stage, to distinguish her from a mere sword with a personality. My evolving characterization of her makes this distinction much more clear, and I suppose it can be mostly justified by saying that she behaved like she was a sentient sword (even though she hated that description) so as not to confuse or scare off Link, who she did not yet trust.

As a fun final note, this also marks the point where I lost track of Link's memento of Midna without even realizing it. That has been fixed in one of my few but highly important retroactive continuity changes.


	11. Serve with Honor

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 11: Serve with Honor**

**The Great Pyramid Summit, The Southern Swamp**

Somehow, Link was not particularly surprised to get his first glimpse of daylight after stepping through that portal, and wind up taking it from the top of the pyramid dominating the island's center. It somehow seemed correct to land out of a trans-spatial distortion at the pinnacle of a towering, dread ziggurat. Whence that sentiment came, he could not say with any certainty, because the next moment he realized just how utterly exposed he was and ducked to his belly. Finding himself alone on the ten-foot-square platform surrounding the skylight down to the sacrifice chamber below, Link crawled quickly to the nearest ledge to take a look around.

Almost immediately, the veteran's face set into a grimace of bitter disgust. The city below was an abandoned, smoking ruin, a burnt-out shell of its former bustling self, its shabby wooden grid pattern marred by a path of devastation most akin to a tornado. The thing he'd fought had entered the city in a furor of blind rage, and it had not been picky about who or what it vented upon. Whatever else he'd done, he'd broken its mystical loyalty to the trolls who'd summoned it, and it had reveled in the opportunity to spread death and sorrow against opponents with less fight in them than Link had shown.

A city of many thousands of residents was now a ghost-town, the populace having scattered, now nowhere to be seen in the brilliant daylight. Here and there a group of armed trolls was moving about the task of accounting for all the damage, but in all, the place might as well have been completely abandoned. Perhaps because of these few, there weren't even any obvious looters or other such vagrants common to disaster areas and battlefields everywhere.

This much, at least, made the work of slipping out of the city that much easier. After making certain that the troll patrols were all preoccupied, Link made his way down the eight-foot drops between different levels of the step-pyramid. He quickly found the dry flood-channel he'd used to infiltrate the city earlier, now scattered with innumerable footprints from the human escapees and their pursuers both, and followed it to the city's limits without incident. Once he was out to the island's more rural areas, he became cautious of stumbling across troll refugees, but even here the great swampy isle's population had vanished. He reached the same general area where he'd arrived on the island in no time at all, located his commandeered boat right where he'd hidden it, and was out onto the vast swamp lake in due course.

Now, at last, Link began to find signs of those who'd been fleeing for their lives while he fought for his in the dark pit. Many boats had run afoul of alligators, drifting obstacles, and mud-bars, leaving a smattering of gnawed corpses and shattered vessels to float as a testament to the haste of the migration. He was acutely aware that he could soon expect to face refugees and soldiers resting amid the 'safety' of the far bank, and took pains to keep far away from where he knew the nearest dock to be.

The journey from where he put in on the far shore to the dock he intended to begin his search for the human escapees from was a rather nightmarish slog through the worst kind of terrain imaginable. As he made the trip, Link cursed its necessity, once again wishing for his claw-shots. He could have been zipping through the treetops right now, not slogging through murderously thick underbrush.

Eventually, the sound of trollish activity became quite clear, and Link knew he was close to the docks. He then climbed a wiry tree with a view into the nearby coastal clearing. Whipping his eagle-eye out, Link searched through the gathered masses of refugees there, carefully scanning around from his high vantage until, at last, he spotted what he wanted.

A group of troll warriors in particularly elaborate headdresses were standing around a bit of soft earth, discussing the elaborate map they'd etched into it with their javelins. Zooming in all the way, he could make out the rocks and twigs that represented landmarks, waterways, and solid trails. In a fumbling manner, made clumsy by the need to cling to the tree, Link produced the map he'd scratched out with his grease pencil on the way into the swamp, turning it about until he had a frame of reference and hastily etching in as many details from the troll's diorama as he could.

There was noise from below, and Link's tree rattled ominously as a crowd of veraq-riders brushed by its base and loped into the clearing, scattering refugees without care as they made their way to the map-post. In loud, guttural trollish, the veraq-rider captain reported to the trolls at the diorama, who quickly added further detail to it, marking some areas with standing twigs like notice flags and scratching other areas out with javelin-tips. Paths lain in smooth river pebbles etched out toward each of the twig-markers from two common points, and as he came to understand the meaning of the large rock quite close to that point, Link recognized the diorama's overall purpose. The prisoners had come ashore and split up, and this map was a compilation of the hunting parties' reports. Any proof he needed to support that wild, intuitive leap was provided easily by the gaggle of fresh human heads he spotted dangling from the riders' saddles.

Link analyzed the information on the map, even as the trolls did. With the benefit of his insider information, he made much more of it than one might expect. For example, because he knew the exact count of prisoners, he could estimate that they'd split down to twos, or close, because otherwise there couldn't possibly be so many separate trails. Unlike the trolls, who could have little idea just how many stragglers remained, Link felt his guts wrench with regret at the piddling six to ten he estimated.

Manuel certainly had the princess with him, and the fact that the search still went on with such fervor was a strong indication that they'd yet to be taken, giving Link back some of his weathered hope. Examining the marks he took to mean places where trails had been picked up and then lost, Link tried in turn to divine which remaining group might be Manuel and Jeanette.

The warrior's efforts were interrupted by a new sound, this time of the scout party clamoring and clattering as they re-equipped and readied to leave again in the now much-narrowed search area. Wasting no time at all, Link zipped back down the tree in a series of leaps, bounds, and acrobatically caught branches. He was careless, for the milling civilians raised a fuss about the unseen creature in the trees and a cadre of soldiers went to investigate where he'd been. He used a bit more caution in his movements after that and managed to make his way north of the docks without further incident. Here he climbed another tree, this one reaching over the heavily beaten veraq trail any search party heading to the zones designated on the map Link had espied would need to take. There he stood in ambush, waiting for his prey.

Not twenty seconds after he came to rest, Link heard a patrol party coming up the path and tensed himself. The next moment, they were flashing beneath him, a rush of reptilian bodies and lanky troll muscles. He waited until he'd counted out the whole of their number, and then dropped down upon the last one as his lizard-cat sprinted below.

The sturdy creature hardly noticed his extra weight, and before its handler could even be surprised by his arrival, Link wrapped his neck in a choke hold and snapped his spine with a violent wrenching motion that also tossed him from the saddle. His corpse tumbled to the jungle floor, and Link already had his bow out. The trolls ahead of him were gathered in a line to march, their mounts hardly even bobbing on this well-worn trail. In other words, they were sitting ducks, and Link quickly dispatched three with shots through their hearts. Of the last two, one had time to turn and look back in confusion before an arrow split his skull, and the lead rider not even that much as twinned arrows took him in the chest and skull simultaneously.

Riderless veraqs slowed to a numb-witted halt and turned to consider the sudden meals that had tumbled from their backs. The dim beast between Link's legs increased its pace at his urging, happy enough to have a lighter weight on its back and utterly obedient to the rule of the hands at its saddle-crown. The escaped prisoners had at most a half-night of hard running as a head start on him, and had certainly gone to ground to hide for the day. If he followed the trail he was on, Link would be at the farthest bounds of the quickly-narrowing search zone in an hour and a half. From there, he could slaughter any patrols he encountered and investigate the leads he'd plucked from the trolls' own search diagram. He'd be the first to admit that he wasn't much of a tracker, but he had a feeling that if he ran down enough troll search parties in the wilderness, he was bound to stumble across their common target eventually. Unfortunately, 'eventually' and 'in time' were totally different beasts.

**A Clearing Near The White Plains Border, The Southern Swamp**

Count Piel de Bayshore clattered into the swampy clearing on his horse, his two bodyguards at either side, and tried not to sweat too profusely. Although they were less than a mile from the open grasslands, the daytime swamp was already a twisting and incomprehensible maze, fraught with danger and biting insects. Danger he was well-used to, but the filthy mosquitoes were the size of cocktail sausages. That and the ominous, secretive nature of his mission here led him to wish desperately for the time when he could put this antechamber to hell behind him forevermore.

In fortunate collusion with his anxiety, he was not kept waiting. The delegation from the troll nation, the name of which he'd been told but had no ability to pronounce, arrived in the clearing only seconds later, as though they'd had someone watching the Ghentese delegation approach. Piel mopped his brow and dismounted, his hands fumbling with the messenger's pouch at his side where the treaty papers resided.

All nobles were required to spend a certain number of months manning one of the southern fortresses, and he'd distinguished himself by not being a total waste of effort from the career-soldiers who spent the better part of their lives in such dreary climes. The lead troll of the agreed-upon three member delegation was one of the largest trolls the middle-aged veteran had ever seen in all the skirmishes he'd ever witnessed. It had an incredible crest of hair on its otherwise shaven head that was greased-upward with fat and rubbed with an outrageous orange dye that sharply contrasted with its green-purple skin. The two warriors flanking him were wearing the heavy breastplate of the troll-guard rather than the rag-tag equipment of tribal raiders he usually encountered, and past the bitter tang of fear in his throat, he recognized the monumental nature of this meeting.

"Hullo there, ambassador," Piel said, stopping a few steps away from his silent hosts. Rather than answer, the three trolls closed the space between them in a sudden sprint and attacked. To his shame, this betrayal caught him entirely off guard, and he had only enough time to stagger back one step in surprise before a leather-wrapped club clipped him along the side of this head. Everything went dark.

When he woke, there was a strong smell of roasting meet. His vision cleared, and he found himself sitting uncomfortably close to a cooking pit, all trussed up like a tied hog. Because he couldn't turn himself, he had little choice but to gaze into the pit, and soon enough the billowing smoke cleared enough for him to see a human torso, skinned, gutted, and decapitated, rotating slowly on the cooking-spit over the glowing coals. He struggled valiantly, but still vomited all over himself, unable even to turn far enough to save his dignity.

Harsh laughter crowded him from all directions out of his view, and soon rough hands grabbed him by the bonds behind his back and dragged him away from the pit. When he stopped, he was aware that there were at least a half dozen beings looming over him, and a guttural command had him kicked in the back, and then levered over until he could just twist up and see a makeshift throne. The aqua-skinned female troll sitting there was topless, wearing nothing but a necklace of human and troll ears and an ankle-length skirt of questionable leather.

"You be da 'uman emissary, den?" She asked, in harshly accented Ghentese. She seemed minimally interested in him and in fact quite distracted by a bubbling cauldron over to one side of her. It was venting a constant stream of virulent green mist, and her eyes were transfixed on its boiling fumes. "Take care wit ya ansah now, ya brutha was a liar, an' now he's _dinnah_."

Despite the state of affairs in the modern Ghentese nobility, Piel had been hand-picked for this mission because of his competence, although he was beginning to fear his expendability had also come into play. Therefore, he quickly gathered how imminently life-threatening his situation was, and moved to preserve his skin with consummate skill.

"Yes. I am the emissary." He answered as simply as possible, making it clear how cowed he was. "You will find the treaty documents in my satchel. Although I gather there will be no treaty now…?" He was less concerned with that mission now than he was about proving the providence of his claim, even though he calculated his chance of surviving this nightmare situation as slim to none, no matter what he said.

"No treaty," she shook her head listlessly as she gazed into the pot. "You be takin' a message back to da Duke. It be mah formahl declahration ahv wah."

At first, the flush of relief he felt at this news of their intention to let him live overcame his senses. It was a long moment before he recognized the truly important content of that phrase.

"_War_? But… but our agreement—!"

"Our agreement is _dead_," the troll leader spat, "De 'uman warriah who ruined mah beautiful city ensured dat much. All de tribe-chiefs ah screemin' fah 'uman blood, and dat meens ya country is gonna burn so ah can keep dem undah mah thumb. It's definahtly not how ah wanted ta spend mah army's strength—'yrule is still what ah want. But dats de wey it's gotta be."

"This… this is madness!" Piel felt his bladder tighten and his aching stomach flop around. What she was suggesting was nothing short of a disaster—a complete reversal of everything Orlouge had been planning. If the trolls weren't going to sit back during the invasion of Hyrule, an invasion the troops were probably mobilizing to carry out at this very moment, then there was nothing but the border forts between them and the vulnerable heart of the White Plains. The only thing keeping him from passing out in utter horror was the fact that he had reason to believe he'd get a chance to warn everyone.

"Mahdness ya sey? Mebbe. But spekin' de truth now—ah was jahst gonna use da power waitin' in 'yrule ta destroy ya country, anyway. Adaptin' ya plan to changin' circumstahnces is de sahn ahv a good leadah don'cha know."

"If… if that is how it is to be…" Piel thought he would heave again, despite having nothing in his stomach to vent. He was given no intelligence of any importance as a contingency for just this situation—no amount of torture could make him tell what he didn't know. Still, he strongly suspected that the new King had planned exactly the same double-cross for the trolls, and he wondered if his liege knew that they were currently a step ahead of him. "I'll be glad to convey whatever declaration of war you wish… sooner rather than later… I hope…"

That last phrase was said with little hope indeed, because Piel had been chosen specifically for his brains. By now, he was acutely aware that he'd heard too much to be allowed to leave with his life, much less with a message, and that they'd never hesitated to speak in front of him had meant he'd never been meant to carry the message in the traditional way after all.

"Ahm afraid dat ya sahveces won't be necessary in dat pahticulah respect." The troll gestured to some of her warriors, and they moved casually back into activity after their brief rest to watch the audience play out. Huge, powerful troll paws suddenly came out of nowhere and clamped onto either side of his head, compressing the region of his jaw. By reflex, he struggled to keep his mouth closed, but he was quickly losing ground against the insistent grip.

"Ya see mistah messenjah, trolls 'ave a different way ta declah total wah." Piel was pulled to one side as she made that parting statement, and now the grip on his jaw redoubled, and his mouth popped open despite his every effort. Out of the side of his field of view came a troll carrying a bundle of forms all coated in wax seals that he immediately recognized as the treaty.

"We prefah ta maek da messenjah, inta da _messahge_." That was the last thing he heard before the thunder of his own pulse in his ears drowned out all other sounds. Before his very eyes, the troll lit the bundle up over the campfire his bodyguard was currently roasting above. The paper took light powerfully, and Piel had enough time to vent a scream before the troll turned and jammed the wad of blazing paper right down his open gullet.

**Deep in the Trackless Wilderness, The Southern Swamp**

Jeanette woke from fitful sleep as she felt the hard ground underneath her vibrate with an irregular beat. For a moment, her disorientation was total. Then the burning agony of every inch of flesh beneath her shins reminded her of the past weeks in a terrible rush of misery. She dragged herself up from her sprawl to wake Manuel to the approaching danger, only to find him already up. He was blocking the entrance of the small cave he'd found for them to use as cover, gently arranging the foliage he'd found to use as camouflage into better coverage. She could just barely see his muscular frame haloed by the golden light of the evening sun leaking in past the foliage.

"What is it?" she whispered, only to be shushed. He waited a moment, and then answered in a whisper of his own.

"I covered our tracks as well as I could, so with the Goddess' blessing, they'll pass right by us. That said, now would be a good time to start praying."

Unabashedly, Jeanette folded her hands together and shut her eyes tight. Recent events had made her previously casual faith a far more controlling force in her mind, and while she had little reason to believe prayer was any part of why the Goddess intervened on her behalf, it certainly couldn't hurt. The rumbling grew closer and closer, until they could make out the distinctive sounds of the hunters' approach, and then even their shouting voices as they coordinated their search.

The veraq footfalls came to a sudden stop, so close that they could hear the stomping feet of the dismounting trolls over their heads. The distance between the roof of the cave and the surface above them was only about six inches of stone and two or three of topsoil, so they were painfully aware of how close their pursuers were now. Jeanette's heart was beating at triple time as her empty stomach gurgled with nausea. She finished her prayer and held her breath.

Above them, the trolls spoke among themselves in quieter voices that they could still clearly hear. There were no humans anywhere who could make any sense of the grinding, ugly language they spoke, but their meaning was clear enough from their tone. They were close and they knew it, and hope was quickly sputtering out in her heart. At this point, all they had to do was make their way down off the jutting cliff they were standing on into the swampy grotto below and in front of them. At that point, they'd have an open line of sight to the cave mouth that was currently beneath their feet. Manuel's camouflage job would not defeat any kind of determined search.

To her horror, the trolls finished commiserating and set out on foot again, cementing the air of doom that threatened to choke her to death all by itself. She risked a shallow breath to avoid passing out, but regretted even that barely-audible noise. She was positive they could smell the dry blood painting her feet, despite the smelly medicinal herbs Manuel had wrapped into her poultices, and in her heart, they'd already been found.

The crowd of armed searchers was in the grotto now, and despite the danger, both fugitives found small holes in the camouflage screen through which to watch them come. They had circled around the sloping ridge and now stood on the opposite side of the grotto, moving along the valley floor, which was steeped in a forest of shrubs that were waist-high to a troll, and came up to about Jeanette's chest. Their loose formation looked ready to pursue any prey that should try to bolt suddenly and make this into a chase again, although Manual looked like that was what he'd like to try anyway. Still, their war-javelins and hatchets gleamed in troll's red steel, and their light armor marked them as elite military scouts rather than the rabble of irregular tribal hunters that they'd been suffering near-brushes with for so long now. Quite like the nightmare of not so long ago, all hope seemed to have vanished.

The trolls were searching carefully through the thick brush as they came, making a huge racket as they beat their way forward. It was such a din, in fact, that they didn't hear the bushes parting behind them. Manuel and Jeanette saw it though, that shape which had melted out of the tree-line at the end of the grotto and melded into the shrubs, and neither one could believe their eyes.

In seconds, the troll furthest back in their sloppily staggered line fell backwards into the undergrowth without any noise that could be heard over the others' searching. A moment later, another one was jerked violently under the tall greenery, and still the rest were oblivious. Now all the rest were more or less abreast of one another, and so the silent assassin changed tactics. There was a tremendous creaking of bent wood that couldn't be missed, but the unaware trolls thought nothing of it, not until the far left troll was blown forward off his feet by the force of the arrow that exploded into his chest. There was a moment of frozen incomprehension among the remaining scouts, and by then the awful creaking had repeated twice, an arrow taking the top of a troll's head off and another troll catching a bolt in his ribs at an angle that was certain to meet his heart.

The rest of the trolls showed some initiative at last, and simultaneously hit the dirt. The grotto was visibly abandoned now, all the combatants hidden beneath the swaying, rustling brush-bushes. There were violent shouts and sounds of anger and frustration, silenced when a gurgling scream and a spray of blood up over the hedges announced that the unseen assailant had claimed another troll. They were all reduced to maneuvering quietly in the maze of branches and leaves that fenced them all together, none daring to give away his position with more talk.

The quiet lasted mere moments before a troll sprang up from the brush in a scream of triumph, javelin held high like a spear to stab someone below him. An iron-shod boot zipped up from the undergrowth and caught him in the privates, raising the pitch of his scream by a few octaves, and when he bent over in agony, a short dagger pierced through his chin and up into his skull. The blood-fountaining corpse collapsed into the brush, and there was a flurry of rustling as what was left of the trolls tired to close on that spot.

The grotto once again dropped down into strained silence, only the occasional rattle of a shrub announcing where one of the combatants had passed. The game of maneuver and counter-maneuver went on for nearly two minutes of severe, heart-pumping tension before a sudden burst of activity brought it to the end.

The last three troll scouts had somehow coordinated a pincer motion, and now two of them came up in one area and the last from the opposite direction, all poised to strike with their javelins or hatchets as they bellowed a simultaneous war-cry. A man rose up from between them like a leaping hare and sprang directly at one of the pair fencing him in on his right. In an incredible bout of acrobatics, he planted a hand on the shocked troll's shoulder and vaulted right over him in a twirling flip, a flash of steel cracking its skull as he planted that dagger of his in its forehead on the way.

Before the corpse could fall, he'd plucked a hatchet off its belt and buried it into ribcage of its ally, who'd just managed to turn around. There was a bellow of agony and a short wrestling match, the last troll taking aim with its javelin, but hesitating as he watched his ally grapple with the enemy. The match ended when a sawing motion drew the hatchet across the engaged troll's belly and spilled its guts. The warrior drew back and neatly scalped the tumbling victim to finish the job, then ducked through a roll to avoid a flying javelin. When he again broke from the underbrush, he immediately flung the hatchet, and it twirled neatly through the air to crack the final troll on the head… handle first. The troll stumbled, stunned by the blow, and the warrior cursed loudly, apparently at himself, before he drew out his bow and fired a shot that neatly bisected the troll's skull.

Inside the cave, Manuel and Jeanette were speechless. One man had just killed eight professional troll warriors, and he was currently more concerned about berating himself in Hylian about learning to throw weapons better than he was by the feat he'd just accomplished with such finesse. It was perhaps that last fact, his vulgar Hylian bantering, that forced their minds to catch up with their eyes at last. When hers did, Jeanette couldn't contain her scream of happiness.

"Link!" she shouted as she burst out of the covered cave mouth before Manuel even had a chance to stop her. She got about three steps on her ruined feet before she stumbled forward and skinned her hands and knees on the stone outcropping below the cave's mouth, just where the grotto's bushes gave out.

The man in question turned in a start, apparently surprised beyond reckoning to hear his name yelled in this of all places. When he noticed who it was who'd called him, his face softened into a mixture of confusion and pleasure.

"Ah, your majesty, fancy meeting you here!" Link called, and bowed at the waist, but then went ahead to start looting the corpses of the troll scouts. "If you'll just give me a moment here, we'll start planning our escape. I see you managed to hold on to Seargeant D'tennon for me, too."

Jeanette sat up, hissing at the unfamiliar experience of being in severe, aching pain. Before this nightmare, she could count the number of times she'd bled in her entire life on just her fingers, and more than half of those were from her recently begun fertility cycles. Agony was definitely an unfamiliar concept, but she found herself becoming acquainted with it all too quickly. Manuel walked up behind her and helped her to sit up, then knelt by her side with the strangest pensive look on his face. Both of them were shocked to see the Hylian warrior still breathing, but he seemed to have far more depth to his feelings on the matter than Jeanette's simple joy and relief.

"So, chance brings us together yet again," Link said, when he finally finished ensuring the dead trolls would stay down and picking them over for valuables. "Sorry if I gave you a scare the other day with that bit of falling, but as you can see, it wasn't anything I couldn't deal with. Now, how are all of _you_ doing?"

"Speaking for myself, Monsieur Link, I am happy to see you alive," Jeanette told him without hesitation, her Hylian showing deep accent with her fatigue. "These beasts were all too close to recapturing me, as you no doubt already realized. Honestly, I can't imagine how they found us."

"Probably the same way I found them, and you," Link said. He reached into one of his ubiquitous pouches and withdrew a leather cord strung with human and troll teeth. The grisly fetish was focused around a charm of fine black hair woven into a knot, and the whole affair was currently straining to get at Jeanette like it had an internal force driving it. "I looted this from the last group of scouts I ambushed on my way north. There was another one among this lot. Apparently I wasn't the only one who knew about the charm your people cast to keep tabs on you"

"Ah… yes… so I see." Jeanette fingered the stuffed animal tied into her rags with a look of bewildered nerves, the toy now coated in blood and sweat as well as tears. "But, other concerns aside, your talking stone had a few things to say to us last night."

"My...?" Link's eyebrow rose, then he grinned. Jeanette proffered a hand, and there lay the gleaming violet gem. "Goodness, I thought that lost for good. Thanks for holding onto it for me. So… she talked to you, huh?" Link's labored expression suggested that he had considered and discarded several lies before deciding to just wait and find out how much she knew.

"Quite. 'She' had some choice words for me when I suggested you were no longer with the living," Jeanette seemed bemused at the nervous front he presented during this exchange, especially considering how nonchalant he'd been about violence.

"Hmph—why would you go and tell her something like that?" Link half-joked, nervous about where this conversation was going. Apparently all it took to fluster this warrior was a pretty girl bandying word games. "It was only a little pit of black despair. It wasn't even bottomless."

Link stopped joking as he saw her wince, then dab at the welling blood on her knees with the dripping blood on her fingers, managing little more than to smear it around. Link noticed the motion and the wounds, and frowned in sympathy, kneeling before her for a closer look.

"I must… apologize to her for doubting you both…" Jeanette said, and then was blushing too hard to keep talking as the older man handled her bare legs to check her wounds. For the first time since escaping, she was acutely aware of how absolutely indecent she was. Why Manuel had never had the same effect on her was a mystery to her, but quite obvious to anyone who understood a young girl with a crippling crush. The change in her mannerisms, bearing, and posture was absolute. Suddenly, she was fluttering her eyelashes and pursing her lips, not to mention breathing in shallow gasps that put her developing breasts on display.

"Yeah, well, I'm underestimated quite a lot," Link told her, giving her a quizzical glance and raised eyebrow for her sudden change in bearing. For a moment he didn't know what to make of such absurdly inappropriate body language under the circumstances, and his chosen response was to ignore it and focus on her wounds. "Here," he reached behind his back and fumbled in his crowded equipment harness, hand threading between various bags and quivers until it finally came back with a small case of stiff, padded leather. He flipped open the lid and revealed a row of fine crystal bottles, each one containing a different color of brightest hue. He chose a bottle containing a bare inch of ruby-red and held it out. "This is some seriously powerful medicine. I don't know what the local equivalent is, but back home, we make this stuff out of chu-chu jelly."

Perhaps fortunately for her, comparative zoological terms hadn't been part of Jeanette's education in Hylian, not beyond what was necessary to discuss trade goods. She gave Link a blank look and considered the medicine with open suspicion. Finally, Manuel took it and handed it to her himself, sparing a dirty look for the foreigner, who'd obviously never realized the girl would find what he told her utterly repugnant had she actually understood. "We use this kind of medicine in the army all the time," he assured her, "Don't worry where it comes from. It'll fix you up, Your Majesty, trust me."

With that further reinforcement, Jeanette took the bottle, allowing Manuel to pop its tight cork for her. She took a sniff, and then sipped at it, wincing at its powerful head-surge and bitter aftertaste. A rush of heat ran across her skin, and the cuts on her knees and palms closed with a tingling sensation. The pain in her feet had disappeared completely, although she could tell she was still cut up. Heartened, she quickly downed the rest of the bottle, the magical surge rushing right to her ruined feet and wrapping them around with a hot, numb, tingling. She could almost have cried at the relief, and the lack of scars was an unexpected delight. The part of her that was still her mother's delicate flower, the part that she'd had to strangle into silence after the first dark night of captivity, had been quietly despairing that she'd wind up disfigured for life.

As she dissolved into almost incoherent bouts of effusive gratitude in fast-paced, half-weeping Ghentese, Link proceeded to replace his now empty medicine bottle and took the opportunity to pack up the rest of his swag too. From his spare equipment satchel, he pulled a bundle of various small items, weightiest among these being a thick brace of identical daggers. They all looked exactly like the knives he'd been bandying around during that brush fight, and Manuel need only a moment of close examination to identify them.

"Scout's Badges…!" Manuel gasped, barely able to believe his eyes. "But… so many!" The exceptionally sharp, seven-inch stabbing weapons were awarded to troll scouts in their own arcane promotion rituals, and were famously used to gut and carve civilians that the troll army's raiding vanguard often managed to capture, turning them into butchered cuts of meat. Link's leather thong-bound brace of daggers had to include at least thirty individual specimens, not counting the eight he'd just now claimed.

"Oh… well, yeah," Link said, adding his new trophies to the collection, "All of these hard-nosed bastards seem to carry one. I figured I'd grab a few, seeing as how steel this fine fetches such a handsome price. I guess I got a little carried away though—it's been a pain fitting these in with my other equipment."

Manuel stared at Link with an expression of furious, pointed disbelief. Nothing about him seemed like it could be real, from the way he fought at such a ridiculous and unmatched level, to the way he behaved as though it was perfectly banal and ordinary to go up against murderous odds and win without receiving a single scratch. With this final straw, he couldn't stand it anymore, and he let his suspicions burst out of him in nearly a shout, only curtailing it to a harried whisper at the last moment in consideration for Her Majesty. He need not have bothered really, because the princess was currently bent over, holding her head like some great ache had split her skull, and was quite distracted.

"How did you know my full name?" The inquiry had daggers in it.

"Oh?" Link, totally nonplussed by his counterpart's anger, tried to remember when he'd let that fact slip. When he spotted just where, he grimaced. "Ah, well, I didn't want to advertise it," Link's conspiratorial whisper was heavy with a sort of snarky embarrassment at being caught, "but I bumped into your family outside of Monseille on my way around the country. It was totally random, nothing at all to do with what I've been up to in the area, but they were all as hospitable as can be. They told me all about you, so much that I recognized you right away. Small world, huh?"

"My… family?" Manuel's anger deflated. The moment he considered it, he could perfectly imagine his two beautiful girls playing greeting committee to such a vagabond as this, Monica for one would love him to death. Of course, from that moment his overriding prerogative changed completely. "Do you have news of them?"

"Christine and Monica, along with little Jaques, are all just fine. I'm afraid that your brother, however, was not so fortunate."

"Martin? What's that gigantic ass done?" Manuel had plenty of vitriol to spare for his estranged brother, even as he rejoiced to hear some news of his family at last, despite its questionable providence.

"Well, he was hoodwinked by the Duke, and took the fall for the assassination attempt on the king." Link spoke over Manuel's shocked expression to complete the story, "His family managed to flee the city with yours, so that none of it could fall on them, and the lot of them are waiting in this town where your sister-in-law had distant family. Last I heard, your brother was rotting in a cell, waiting to be drawn and quartered."

"They'll need some damn big horses for that job!" Manuel said, even as he paled. He might have his differences with Martin, but the man was still his brother, and while his bourgeoisie wife had always rubbed him the wrong way, he absolutely adored his nephews. "But better it not happen at all. Martin is a jackass, not a traitor, and his subordinates will never stand to see him executed like one. But still, they couldn't possibly delay it forever. We have to expose that snake!"

"Yes, we must!" Jeanette, who had been listening closely and discreetly for some time now, cut in with an expression of utter resolution. "I'm not sure what was in that potion, but I feel much renewed. I'm not exactly sure what's been wrong with my head, but it's as though I've finally found myself again," she said, and indeed looked like a new person now that she was healed and had gathered herself, "and that means its past time to put this matter to rest. I've only had second-hand accounts so far, but it seems to me that all the sources are trustworthy enough, and so I must assume that my uncle has betrayed us all. If he imagines I'll stand for that, he's about to learn otherwise."

Link and Manuel just stared at her for a long moment. They took a break to glance at one another for confirmation, and then back to her for another, closer look. Certainly stress did adverse things to people, but where the hell had she been hiding all _that_? Eventually, Link shrugged. For all he knew, _all_ princesses were like that. Manuel was left blinking.

Although renowned for her beauty and grace, not much was said about the Sapphire of Ghent's level of acuity. If she had always been as smart as she was revealing herself to be, the fact that it was kept quiet made a certain sense. From what little he knew of politics, they were looking north to the Caredan Confederation for her suitor. They'd have a hard time luring any of the Caredan Dons into the royal family if she didn't seem to conform to the 'dumb and pretty' standard of those sweltering northern climes. Whatever the nature of the deception, they'd see the truth one way or another soon enough.

"Yes, well, the sooner we get going, the better," Link settled things by packing up most of his equipment. "Now, what am I forgetting?"

"Ahem!" The Princess was crouched over, using her still-impressive hair to help cover the sad, sad remnants of her long-obliterated nightgown. Her blush was prominent. With her sudden awareness of her state, perhaps linked to her sudden recovery from that fog of puerile complacency that had carried her so docilely along thus far, the men too cringed away in embarrassment.

"Err… I have a spare tunic, but it's with my horse on the outskirts of the swamp. Besides, it would fit you like a tent, Your Majesty." Suddenly, she was definitely a 'Your Majesty,' and not Jeanette, despite her youth and the circumstances. The change in everything from her bearing to her expression was nothing short of uncanny. Not even a minute past, she'd been putting out flirty vibes so clear that even Link noticed them. Now she looked ready to murder him with a cold stare if he didn't find some way to clothe her in a damn hurry.

"Then, sir, I expect you to improvise," there was no girl-crush in her tone now. Imperiousness was not something he was unused to dealing with, but the reversal of the situation left Link grimacing in confusion.

"I'll give you a choice between the shirt off my back, or my blanket," Link said, trying not to let his annoyance show in his tone. "I'm sure Manuel here would have offered as much if you'd mentioned something earlier."

"Indeed I would have, Your Majesty," Manuel cut in on his cue, and then fell silent himself. He was at fault entirely for not having clothed her at least to that extent much earlier. It hadn't occurred to him specifically because she hadn't said anything and he was enjoying it a little more than he'd like to admit.

"I'll take the blanket, it should serve until we can reach some form of civilization, or at least your horse." Dutifully, Link extracted his camp kit, which was wrapped in his blanket until it formed a tight bundle. He unbundled it, dumping the kit into his empty bomb bag, and then handed her the huge, coarse, waxen mass of his waterproof sleeping bundle. She accepted it with a sound of somewhat more calm, genuine gratitude, only to find that it was far, far larger than she'd imagined.

"My goddess, is this a horse blanket?" she asked, commenting on its size, and only then realizing what an insult that might be taken as. Link, finally brightening up again, took the opportunity for all it was worth.

"No, I'm afraid my horse blanket is with my horse too," he smirked, "but I did buy both from the same clothier. You certainly have a good eye, Your Majesty."

A sound came out from under the blanket that might have been an effete, girlish chuckle, but there was no way to tell for sure.

"Anyway, back to the issue of getting out of here. This lot," he poked a thumb at where the corpses were shrouded by bushes, "left their veraqs up on the cliff top. I'm thinking that'll get us out of here fastest."

"Hmph," Manuel guffawed with some insult or another in Ghentese, "you can't ride a veraq. They attack any non-troll they see! Everyone knows that."

"Oh come, I've stolen three so far today just searching for you two. 'Impossible' is not how I'd call it, but it's a little tricky. Come on, I'll show you how it's done."

"What in the world are you suggesting?"

"Well, I've found that all the fight goes right out of the ornery bastards after the very first time you boot 'em in the nose. Once you're on their backs, they don't care what species you are anymore. Princess, are you coming?"

A hand burst out of the concealing mass of blanket and held out a purple gem.

"You should tell her you're alright. She was terribly affected when we thought you dead."

Link eyed the stone for a moment before pocketing it. _That_ was an interesting bit of news.

"Hey Seargeant, tell me something," Link continued, as they walked over toward where the troll patrol had left their veraqs. "I've been meaning to ask, I had the sort of extending claw-things when we were back under that pyramid..."

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

Zelda sat back in her fine desk chair while her eyes saw the room without _seeing_ it. Staring off into space, she was not making the best of impressions on her Minister of Agriculture, a stuffy little holdover from the regency that was sufficiently anal-retentive to never feel the touch of corruption that had infected so much of that administration. The elderly man in his official robe huffed in indignation when he was finally satisfied with the sound of his own voice to such an extent that he could bother to notice her inattentive expression.

"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty," he croaked, "but I said—"

"You said the corn fields of the eastern provinces have been showing a declining production trend, although you used quite a few more words than that… or than were at all necessary, for that matter," Zelda berated him without paying any more real attention to him than before. "I'll have an order to the Royal Survey drafted by the end of the week, commissioning new lands to be earmarked for settlement and public plowing. In the meantime, I will encourage the grain magnates to begin rotating crops for greater soil endurance instead of glutting it all to maximize profits. Does that plan sound satisfactory?"

"Er…" the man was stunned. He'd have bet his life that she wasn't listening, but she just presented to him a perfect echo of his own thoughts on the matter, and a mite bit more generous a plan besides. Commissioning a new project from the Royal Survey and opening new land would put a real pinch on the already stretched treasury. "It's a brilliant strategy, Your Majesty," he admitted. Considering it was what he'd have done himself, he could say no less. Besides, he had no desire to join the Treasury Minister in his fate.

"Very well, if there is nothing else, you are dismissed." The curt coldness in her tone was a recent affection that all of her ministers and staff had noticed, even though it had only been there for a day. The Minister of Agriculture retreated, nursing his confusion and hurt pride, and the Princess was left in silence.

At length, she sent one of her always-present pages off to summon Auru and dismissed everyone else from her presence. Afflicted by the chill of unpleasantness that had been radiating from her all day long, no one raised an eyebrow at the unusual request. When she was alone, she took out the whispering stone and set it openly on her desk. She then sat and stared at it, as if she could make Link safe and well by force of pure will concentrated into the ancient charm. She became so absorbed in dozens of recursive loops of speculation, each more dire than the last, that she actually didn't notice when the elderly Foreign Minister slipped in and sat across from her.

"Ever it is the female vice to enjoy the sparkle of jewels," he announced himself after waiting in amused patience for her to notice him, and being disappointed. Zelda looked up, giving him a bleak stare that immediately chilled his amusement to a jarring startle. He felt his blood run cold as he saw into the swirling typhoon of intellect behind those eyes, an emotionless doppelganger to the amazing depth he'd found there before. That moment could have lasted an eternity, but at just that instant, the silence was shattered by a high-pitched clattering as the gem vibrated loudly against the hardwood desktop.

As gentle candle light pushed back the dusky darkness, both princess and minister glanced down at it in surprise, and now shock was equal on both sides. Zelda had expected no call, she hadn't even instructed her Ghentese counterparts on how to use the whispering stone. Auru had no reason to suspect a stone could suddenly burst into motion at all.

In an instant, burgeoning hope overcame any and all sense of caution, and Zelda touched it in the way that would signal the all-clear, despite her uninitiated audience. The voice that sprang forth immediately set her heart to a springing two-step beat, and the relief that rushed her body nearly sent her into a swoon. As it was, she could hardly afford such an affront to her dignity, and clamped down to a mere smile and sigh.

"So yeah," Link began, "I hear someone's been telling tales of my untimely demise. I gotta say, while it would have been a damn heroic way to go out, it's gonna take a little more than a deep hole to keep me down."

"That's incredibly relieving news," Zelda didn't try to hide her happiness, even as she suddenly remembered that Auru was sitting across from her with an expression of deeply perplexed bemusement. He couldn't help but recognize the voice, making this situation a near-total surprise, if not at all unpleasant. But still, she'd decided to consult him in the first place, if not having quite decided to inform him of all this, and this sort of settled the question. "But, just as a warning, I have Auru here with me Link. I decided to bring him in to help plan the Ghentese Civil War."

"The what?" Auru and Link echoed each other's surprise. Zelda waved away Auru's sudden burst of upset curiosity with a gesture that promised details at a later date. He sat back in his chair with his face creased in concern, but remained silent.

"Oh great, somehow, 'The Ghentese Civil War,' sounds like a whole lot of work for _me_." Link sounded resigned rather than genuinely upset, and Zelda found herself smirking. "That being the case, I suppose I'll have to fill you in on my heroic heroing later. Unless you're trying to hear that story now?"

"Another time, perhaps," Zelda declined, not without some regret. The tale of how he survived falling into a bottomless pit sounded like quite the ballad material. "Right now, I need to consult with Auru before I can recommend a new goal. Please stay on the line if at all possible."

In a truly prodigious feat of summarizing, Zelda briefed Auru on the Ghentese situation as it had developed over the past weeks. While he began his audience to this tale with a look of mild disbelief and then spent much more of it with a look of utter disbelief, he finally settled into a sort of wide-eyed shock were nothing more could phase him. Zelda's voice was even and her explanation was extremely concise, although Link did break in with one extra detail here and there when he felt one necessary. Soon, Auru was asking questions about facets of the situation that neither of the less experienced parties had ever even considered, drawing forth even more information than they'd realized they possessed. In the end, he had a look of bright-eyed excitement, a youthful glow returning to his tanned, wrinkled skin as he was swept up in the incredible air of adventure that permeated this entire gathering.

"So, now we have a dispossessed royal who is the unchallengeable heir to the throne, but has no military support to speak of, and the better part of the nobility believes her lost, dead, or cloistered in some far-away place." Auru held up one hand as if to palm that entire side of the conflict into a single category. "On the other is a pretender who holds no legitimacy beyond what he has snatched with his blood-soaked hands and the halberds of his immediately loyal vassals. His main advantage is the legitimacy of bloody force, and the fact that he is above suspicion of his intent to seize all power."

"Yep, that sounds about right. Damn, when you put it that way, this is going to be even more work than I was afraid of. Since that's the way it is, we'd damn well better get started." No where in Link's tone was any suggestion that he thought the task beyond them.

"Personally, I thought it best to present the princess at one of the border forts and attempt to gain some power to go along with her obvious legitimacy." Zelda presented the plan she'd barely been able to sketch out past her worry over Link. "If we attempt to take her straight to the capital, there's far too great a chance that Orlouge will manage to make her disappear somehow. Besides, that's where all of his personally loyal troops are quartered—there's far too great a chance that any order to have him detained from the young princess will be totally ignored."

"That certainly sounds like the best approach, at least based on the information we have." Auru was deep in thought. He'd had a lifetime's experience with the intrigues of the continent's many nations. What was happening in Ghent was still unprecedented, even to him. As far as he knew, regicide and pretendership on this scale had never even been contemplated in the past. Every now and then a second son will have a quarrel with the heir apparent, or cousins and nephews will disagree over who should inherit from an heirless king, and their factions would fight out the issue of legitimacy, but this was entirely different. The entire situation teetered on a balance of deception and misconception that could soon rip an entire nation to shreds in gore-soaked civil war. "Still… still… I am hesitant…" He bit his lip. "We are speaking of fomenting a civil war. Innocent lives will be lost. Is this really what we want?"

"War is the last thing anyone here wants," Zelda dismissed his oblique accusation as beneath her contempt. "In an ideal situation, Orlouge's deception will come to light, and the people will rally behind their rightful monarch. But still, even if it comes to war, we cannot allow ourselves to hesitate for a moment. Orlouge, for some reason or another, has his eyes set on Hyrule. Nothing that Ashei can do will prepare us for a stand-up war with Ghent anytime soon, and so we must stop their army before it can ever march. The most direct method is obviously to give them bigger issues to worry about on their own doorstep. Blood is blood, yes, but Ghentese blood is not Hylian blood."

Auru opened his mouth to protest, a vehement condemnation forming on his lips, but the expression of disgrace on Zelda's face made it die on his tongue. Even if she could not truly feel bad for making that cold-blooded decision, she could still be ashamed by the fact that she could find no better solution. It seemed that with all her intellect, some things were still beyond her. Auru took her for genuinely ashamed, unaware of the utterly ice-cold reasoning behind her contrition.

"I understand." He relented. "Very well, I will give some thought to the issue—"

"Uh guys, I'm gonna need you to excuse me for a minute. I've got company."

**A Northbound Veraq Trail, The Southern Swamp**

Link thrust his whispering stone back under his armor and gave a waving signal to Manuel, who rode some lengths behind him with the Princess on his back. Under the pretense of the darkening trail, he'd slowed their pace so he could talk with a voice undisturbed by galloping. The signal told his ally to pull back and hide, and he obeyed without concern. He was well aware that guarding the Princess was far more important than the dangerous job of riding point on their ragged convoy.

Up ahead, a fork in the road merged a trail from some western part of the swamp with his going north, and he'd heard the telltale grunting of a Veraq riding hard coming from that direction. Changing up his own pace, he managed to be only two lengths behind the other rider when he rounded the bend in a hard gallop. The troll rider spared a glance backward to check what the noise was, but in the dim light, one could hardly distinguish the features of whoever was on the other trollish mount. Everyone knew only trolls could ride the reptilian creatures, anyway, and the lone rider actually slowed up a little to ask for news from a stranger he doubtless assumed to be a fellow messenger.

Just for fun, Link pulled out one of the claw-shots he'd recovered from Manuel's care and fired it at the rider as the distance between them closed. The spring-loaded claw cracked the troll on the back of the head in a decidedly non-lethal blow that was still so hugely unexpected that it tumbled the rider right off his mount. Chuckling at the sight, Link fired the claw-shot again, this time catching the other veraq's reigns and slowing it to a stop remotely. He eventually pulled his own mount up against the one caught by his claw and stopped them both, hopping off to head back to the fallen troll.

One dead troll later, Manuel and Jeanette had caught up in response to Link's whistling call. They found him poring over piles and piles of beads that he'd evidently looted from a sack on the departed troll's person. The loose chains were quite charming black obsidian and other low-value, high-luster rocks, and Link couldn't understand while Manuel was suddenly cursing virulently and leaping off his mount. The beads were snatched from his hands and held up for closer examination, and Link had to fight to keep his blood cool as a sudden hot urge told him to stab Manuel in the throat, between the ribs for the heart, or across the gut in a disembowelment—whichever seemed most convenient.

"Sweet Goddess… this cannot be…" Manuel gave one last quick glance through the beads, then tossed the entire affair to the dirt. Link was suddenly more interested than he was angry, and both he and the princess waited silently for an explanation. "War beads." Manuel supplied at last. "There are still some on display at the mustering yards in Monseille. They say that the troll leadership hands them out as a signal to all the local chieftains that it is time to march to war."

"But… there have got to be two hundred lengths here!" The princess didn't quite get it yet, although Link did, and was now cursing right along with Manuel. "Why would they need a force that big to track us down? Unless…" She finally caught on, and her expression hardened. Whatever else, she was certainly quick on the uptake. "Unless we have much bigger problems to worry about than dealing with traitors or the rightful line of succession."

"We need to warn the southern forts!" Manuel snapped, climbing onto the Veraq only after giving it a no-nonsense threat with the butt of a troll scout dagger he'd bummed off of Link.

"Tell me something I _don__'__t_ know!" Link complained, as he dashed up the road to collect his Veraq again. Rushing through his mind was the need to recontact Zelda and Auru. He had a feeling they'd agree that this was a far more tolerable 'distraction' for the Ghentese army than a mere civil war.

**Second Full Revision Notes**

Sweet mercy this chapter needed a crapload of work. In my original opening note, I commented that it would be full of errors because I hadn't bothered editing it before posting it. Well, I literally can't believe how true that comment was. Do you know I actually had a massive, I mean truly egregious continuity error in this chapter? To be specific, Link opened the chapter by making flagrant use of the claw-shots that he lost in chapter 9—the ones he had to have lost to not save himself from falling into the pit. Holy crap, that's really bad! I went back and checked the reviews, and at least one person actually pointed that out to me. Only now do I get around to fixing it. Other than that, the dialect I gave to the trolls was and still remains one of my greatest regrets about this story. It's bad. I mean just terrible. I want to claw my eyes out when I read it. Nothing I seem to do makes it any better, but I haven't the heart to ret-con it out completely, so it stands now in a modified, but still terrible format. I swear, I'm never doing another dialect without some kind of guide or auto-translate software or something.


	12. A House Divided

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 12: A House Divided Cannot Stand**

**_Chateau du Sud_****, The Principality of Ghent**

In the pouring rain, the fortified castle village of _Chateau du Sud_ loomed up like an unbreakable ocean monolith shedding the endless waves of the tide. Jeanette looked up out of her carriage's small window and contemplated the terrific walls in quiet awe. The wizened, half-crumbling walls of Monseille were the only others she'd ever seen, and they were nothing compared to these fastidiously maintained, almost manicured fortifications. This was the rock against which any invasion from the troll lands to the south would inevitably have to break, the first and last shield between the wide open heartland of Ghent and the people's ancient enemy. Seeing it like this filled her at last with a sense of small hope that had been so hard to muster in the frantic days since her improbable rescue from the heart of the Southern Swamp.

Cloistered in the warm solitude of her private carriage, that nightmarish experience seemed worlds away, little more than a terrible dream. Alas, it was a dream that haunted her, both in her nightmares and on into her waking hours, and all the many mysteries that still surrounded the entire experience weighed upon her, making this essential operation she'd embarked upon all the more difficult.

Escaping from the swamp had been entirely uneventful after that rakish foreign brute had joined her bodyguard—his scouting of their path lead them past unknown dangers without incident, and they'd found themselves under the unobstructed light of the sun within a day. It was a day of incessant hard riding, and the endless hours had threatened to rub her thighs raw. At length, she'd become so exhausted that Manuel, the sturdy youth she'd come to trust as more of a reliable kept man than a military officer, had been forced to strap her to his back to keep her on the saddle.

Jeanette had taken their emergence into the plains to indicate a change of pace to something saner, but she'd been wrong. That inhumanly energized, driven man had allowed them only a short reprieve as he left to search the countryside, locating an absolutely gorgeous horse in only a few hours of searching and blowing on that little whistle of his. With that magnificent beast beneath him and his charges switching between the two winded Veraqs, they'd made unbelievable time toward a thriving southern hamlet some day's travel north of the _Chateau_. The place was a trade center and travel crossroads that supplied almost all of the fortified farming colonies and guard posts in the southern region, and was possibly the only city in the country that could compare to Monseille in sheer development.

The recent air of fear had not been kind, and they'd found its un-walled suburbs almost abandoned as anyone with money fled to safer climes. Troll raiding parties were all around, and everywhere the army posts had been stripped to the bone to answer the muster call in the north, which made everything outside of its laughable little white stone walls utterly dangerous to inhabit. The town's militia managed to keep the people within the walls calm, and they'd finally met human civilization again as they came to one of the gates.

Predictably, the hard-eyed militia guardsmen were not pleased to see Veraqs, but the shock of such a novel concept as a man riding those creatures was enough to at least get them heard. Once he had the guards' ears, Manuel proved his rank with a series of coded challenged phrases that the grunts actually had to call an officer in to confirm. After that hassle of formality was through, they were welcomed warmly enough, Manuel being swept away in a storm to tell the story of half-lies and omissions that would explain their unorthodox arrival with the least amount of ado possible. He was not able to warn the guards here yet of the coming threat, or mention any part of their adventure in the swamp, because they would never be able to explain why they'd come so far north rather than immediately reporting to the first military personnel they could find.

The reason for this was simple enough—warning the military of the mustering troll army was not nearly as urgent as transforming Jeanette back into something resembling royalty. As explained thoroughly by the mysterious woman who spoke from the vagabond's magic stone, no one would ever believe Jeanette was who she said, not looking like a half-drowned urchin as she did. Only a handful of people had any concept what their monarchs looked like, and the rest was all _image_. Thus, presentation would be key when she showed up and tried to issue royal edicts. Here they would find many things essential to that paramount cause, not the least of which was Manuel's family, who were destined to be essential players in restoring her to the throne.

Jeanette paused in her ruminations to glance backward out the window. They were turning now, and she could just spot the second carriage trailing behind hers. Inside were her 'nurse,' Manuel's gorgeous young wife Christine, her 'Tutor,' his lovely sister-in-law, Miranda, and her 'handmaiden,' the precious daughter, Monica. Jeanette could scarcely imagine what the reunion between them and their man, Manuel, must have been like.

At the time it was taking place, Jeanette had been dead to the world, sleeping like a corpse in the finest bed Caredan gilders could by at the town's largest inn. Among other surprises, the foreign killer turned out to be wealthy, too, and he'd felt it only proper to treat her. Despite his token effort at treating her with some dignity after she'd put her foot down, she got the impression he would have done the same for any young girl who'd been through what she'd faced.

Still, as that situation developed, it was not _his_ wealth that bought her back into a station befitting a princess, but rather, that of Miranda. She was present this time, when that man, Link, had explained the dire situation to her. Manuel and Christine were off becoming 'reacquainted' as young couples will, and their children were asleep, but the three of them had been conspiring. The woman turned out to be intelligent as well as beautiful and rich, and knew exactly how to proceed. She didn't even stagger in deferential surprise when she realized Jeanette's identity, which is more than could be said for the rest of Manuel's family.

They spent a day in preparation. If she'd been asked before, she did not believe such a transformation could be possible in a single day, but still, it was done. With funds withdrawn from a local bank, Jeanette found herself in a salon of the highest caliber, a place that catered to the wives of provincial nobles that liked to consider themselves trendy. Hours of pampering transformed her utterly.

Jeanette would be the first to admit that her own features were unusually beautiful, perhaps even unnaturally so. After a lifetime of hearing as much from every source, show-stopping beauty had become a part of her inherent psychology, and her return to being akin to a masterfully crafted doll restored her as no amount of medication or sleep could hope to. Some of the stylists, in a show of customer-flattery or a genuine burst of silly enthusiasm for their work, literally wept to see what they had wrought. The salon's director begged her to sit for the local portrait artist, as hers would be the establishment's crowning achievement, but she would have refused, even if there were time. She'd once been told that the two greatest artists in all of Careda had abandoned all dignity and broken into a fistfight when the question of which one would paint her had arisen. A back-country painter simply couldn't hope to do her justice.

Appropriation of these carriages and suitable luggage had been the next step, and then they'd been on their way. Manuel had parted from his family with only the greatest regret, and by now was inside the castle already, having 'only just' escaped from the Southern Swamp with a tale that would doubtless become a thing of military legend. With him he carried the war beads that he'd 'recovered' during his 'daring escape,' bearing a nation-saving warning to what defenders remained here. If there was a country left after this coming war, he would doubtless be a hero of no small renown. She found the situation rather amusing, but he must have felt it bitter to take credit for so many actions that were not his own. Once again surprising her, the Hylian had convinced her completely that he didn't care if his exploits were credited to someone else. More and more, she simply could not anticipate him.

They were at the gates now, having 'only just arrived from the southern port,' where her ship had been 'forced to land after a storm' while 'conveying her home from the distant convent' where she'd been 'recovering from a dire illness.' That the story was an utter fabrication was besides the point—it was what the majority of people already believed, if they'd heard that she wasn't safe at the castle at all. Any confusion could be attributed to an administrative foul-up, and her traveling incognito was just melodramatic enough to fit the common man's inherently romantic view of the monarchy.

Jeanette's chest tightened as they came to the gates. Beyond this point, she'd be playing things by ear. In an extensive discussion with the mystery woman of the magic stone, she'd planned for various contingencies. That person, whoever she was, was as brilliant and devious as any shady courtier Jeanette had ever gossiped with. It rankled her to never even have a name to match the voice, but the council the voice gave was more precious than gold, and she could not begrudge her the anonymity. If she did weather this ordeal, it would be entirely due to that one's scheming and the astounding warrior she apparently commanded.

There was a commotion outside as her driver was challenged. He was a trustworthy friend of Miranda's family who managed their southern assets, and he'd been only too happy to throw his hat in with their plot. At this point there was a dispute over why they were even here. 'What's all this then,' she could imagine their confusion at this unexpected arrival. 'Don't you know who this is?' exactly the kind of thing a gate guard didn't want to hear. Any moment now, they'd require some gesture of proof that she was the improbable caller that the driver claimed. There was a polite knocking at her door exactly on cue, and she paused for effect before giving her response.

In a dainty gesture, she cracked the window and thrust her delicate hand out into the rain. There on her finger was a tiny golden ring bearing the royal seal, and the guards almost fell over one another to genuflect, despite the weather. They didn't give her entourage anymore trouble.

The ring was another key feature, considering they had no actual credentials to speak of. The original was doubtless decorating some troll's gnarled finger by now, but this forgery was more than enough to convince the ignorant of her providence. It had taken a vast sum of money to have the jeweler rush the job, but it was worth every cent. Here they were, floating on a raft of lies, and now they were being freely admitted to the most secure fortress in all of Ghent.

**On Top of the Second Carriage**

Link crouched under his weather-proofed cloak and gripped the reigns tightly in both hands. To his right was another of Miranda's good southern friends, a jovial, middle-aged man who worked wholesale to supply grocers. The two of them had made some half-hearted attempts at communication, but the rain discouraged that. They sat in mutual misery on the drenched carriage roof and watched as they were waved into the fortress. Success.

Link crouched down further as they passed through the checkpoint, using his cloak hood to hide his pointed ears. They clattered quickly through a small village of squared streets, the shops and residences housing all the equipment and labor needed to keep a military outpost like this well supplied. Every feature had been lain out with defensibility in mind, from the design of the streets to the sturdy stones of the buildings. Eventually they and their entourage of confused guardsmen reached a sheltered, heavily built doorway that guarded the only ground-level entrance to the main keep.

Passengers unloaded in a flurry of rain cloaks, and he was gratified to see that they never missed a cue; not even little Monica made the mistake of giving him a second look. Once the VIPs were gone, the guards barely spared the teamsters a second look, and they were pointed toward the stables. That was where Link was going to be spending the next, highly critical phase of this job, in which he played absolutely no role.

In a way, it seemed rather boring, and he wasn't at all looking forward to waiting out this part in silent suspense. Of course, he probably should have known better than to even think something like that, but he didn't catch himself until it was too late.

"_Is this to serve as thine abode, Link_?" a familiar voice echoed inside of his skull. For a moment, he was certain he'd imagined it. "_Tis a respectable fortification, but it dost lack class. I find it laughable_."

"Arrika?" Link said out loud, when he finally recognized what was going on and berated himself mercilessly for daring to complain of boredom, even silently. "Good to hear you again, 'milady. I was beginning to fear I'd imagined that entire encounter down in that tomb."

The other drover cast him an odd look, and Link waved at him pleasantly, prompting him to edge away with a dubious expression. Infuriated by his own carelessness, Link changed tactics.

"_Can you hear it when I do this_?" Link spoke the words in his mind only.

"_Of course not! Why on earth wouldst a magical entity that hast bonded with thine soul possess the power to read thine thoughts? The very concept is preposterous_!"

"_Well, at least you have a well developed sense of humor."_ Link audibly sighed. He'd feared as much during the less serious parts of the binding ritual. Behind her imperious, even vicious pride, there lay a rather fun-loving gal. It was an interesting change. "_Even if your joke wasn't all that funny_."

"_Well, no, certainly not as funny as that princess's face_," Arrika changed the subject violently, and Link actually choked on a snigger that snuck up on him out of nowhere. "_To imagine that such a strumpet is the pinnacle of modern beauty. Jean was far more comely than she—bachelors were known to prostrate themselves at her feet, and many a married man wept to see her out of reach. Shame she was such a fanatical prude. I never got to see _anything_ fun riding around in _her_ head._"

"Wha—huh?" Link sputtered out loud, getting another odd look from his fellow teamster. He tried to find a way to respond to that, but was at a loss. Instead, he noted something else. "_Uh… are you aware that your manner of speech is changing_?"

"_Certainly. How long do you think I've been doing this, anyway? Do you have any concept of how often I've had to adjust to changing languages over my lifetime? Indeed, Father himself anticipated the fact. Now that I've finished relocating my focal point to your soul, I have access to much of your knowledge, language included. Anyway, I must say, you're quite the swordsman. It's been a thousand years since I contracted with a genuine blademaster—and never before one quite like you. This should be even more interesting than I could have hoped in my wildest dreams_."

"_A blade-what_?" Link started to ask, before he recognized the more momentous portion of that statement. "_HEY! Don't you go rooting through my memories you hopped-up potato peeler! If I find out you've been into my personal history, I'll have you chopping livestock bowels for the sausage rollers_!"

"_Do relax_," the easy amusement in her tone lightened as she sensed the sincerity in that threat. "_I have no access to your personal memories or your current thoughts—I can merely hear what you subvocalize and reference the facts that you know._" She paused for a moment. "_In other words, I've moved into quite the vacant loft_."

"_Okay, now you're just _begging_ for an intimate encounter with the boot-callous on my big toe_."

"_Alright! Calm down, I'll behave. What I meant was that I was impressed. I've never had a partner whose mind was so completely dedicated to knowledge of the killing arts. From what I've seen, the only things you know well besides combat are animal husbandry and fly fishing_."

"_Don't forget bug-collecting_," Link admonished her, feigning offense. "_Anyway, education is for wizards, merchants, and nobles. Not having one has hardly managed to slow me down so far_."

"_Hmph_," the indignant sound was quite odd confined to the inside of his head, "_with an outlook like that, I'm astounded you've lived so long. You're fortunate that I consented to grace you with my support. I suppose I'll have to take it upon myself to squeeze some knowledge between these pointy ears of yours_."

"_Oi! If I'd realized I was signing up for this, I might have thought twice about lugging your sword out of that grave! Did I just not notice the fact that isolation had driven you crazy, or is this some kind of pre-prepared bait-and-switch?"_

"_Be reasonable, or I'm liable to find you boring! I've been locked in half-dreaming hibernation for over fifteen times longer than you've been alive. Not only that, but my last contractor had a gigantic stick labeled 'religious asceticism' lodged right up where the sun doesn't shine. For your information, I'm just _happy_! I don't see how it's my problem if you can't tolerate a little enthusiasm now that my life is suddenly renewed. Before you came traipsing by, my soonest prospect of feeling the sun again was if the swamp above me should happen to erode away under the force of applied eons. I think I'm entitled to some high spirits. Anyway, the way you're going on, you'd think I was behaving like that lady who gifted you that magic trinket._"

"_Oh, and just what are you on about now_?" Link sensed that she was getting at something. She didn't answer right away, and he had time to help store away the carriage and stable the horses, including Epona. The carriage had never been searched, just as Zelda had promised, and Link felt like an ass as he removed his personal equipment from the hiding place on the carriage rack he'd gone to some trouble to devise. At length, he found a nice dry portion of Epona's stall and buried himself most of the way into a haystack. Arrika's sword was there with him, wrapped protectively in the oiled leather and canvas he'd rigged in lieu of a proper sheath.

"_So you understand that I've been aware and observing this entire time, even while I could not speak_?" Arrika's voice piped up eventually. Link, who'd been well on his way to sleep, perked up at this.

"It became clear when you started cracking jokes about recent events, yes," Link agreed. He spoke out loud now that he was alone, mostly because it helped him to believe he wasn't just talking to himself in a weird, if not insane, internal debate. A weird, if not insane _external_ debate was a slim improvement, but it _was_ an improvement.

"_So… you realize that your princess, the Hylian dame at the other end of your magic stone, is using you, right_?"

Link was shocked, because of all the things she might broach, this was one he'd certainly never seen coming. He had a brief flash of anger at the mere suggestion, but that faded quickly enough. The truth has a way of penetrating willful ignorance, at least with intelligent, inherently honest people like this young warrior.

"Yeah… basically, I am." Link admitted. "Heck, I essentially signed up in the first place to be used. Oh, I made some noise about keeping my independence and checking her orders against my own conscience—whatever that is—but I don't have much in the way of illusions. I'm as much Zelda's sword as you are mine. I guess it's a really good comparison, actually—I even give her feedback the way you can."

"_And… that's okay with you? I'm not criticizing, I'm just interested in who I'm going to be beholden to, ultimately. Is this woman worthy as you are? If not, we might have issues_."

"Zelda's no power-hungry tyrant," Link assured her, certain of at least that much, even as he noticed in shock that he was talking of her by first name. "I dread if she ever turned down that road, though, with all I owe her. She's supplying me with a purpose, after all. I'm a freak, Arrika—that I've managed to impress you with my worth is just one more symptom of that. I can't be happy living peacefully in one place, and if I just wandered around fighting without purpose, I'd probably go crazy. At some point, I decided I might as well follow the path set by the one person around who's as smart as I am deadly. I get to protect my loved ones, help out the only person who can really hope to understand me, and I never run out of faces to break. I figure I'm making the best of an impossible situation."

"_If you say so_," Arrika didn't sound pleased. "_So tell me, why haven't I tasted blood yet_?" She changed the subject. "_I figured you'd have greased me up with warm innards at least a few times by now. I'm practically disappointed, although I can't say I was looking forward to more troll, even after centuries of rest. I've had my fill of those things several times over, you know._"

"I can imagine, and I figured it was a sign of respect." Link patted Arrika's sword. "I've had the most trouble finding opponents worth drawing even my old, totally mundane sword on lately. Generally I don't bother unless they at least have an impressive numerical advantage or time is of the essence. It just doesn't seem sporting—and giving the other guy even so much as the illusion of a sporting chance is all that keeps it interesting these days."

"_That is an attitude that will see you dead—but I understand it_." Arrika did understand it. Link didn't want to feel like a freak, no matter how self-evident his unusual qualities were. Lowering his fighting level to something that was almost believable, even at a threat to his life, was one way he exercised that prerogative. She could feel in him no suicidal devotion to the practice, however, and so she let it drop.

"I suppose though, that if this war pans out, you'll see plenty of innards soon enough. _Troll_ innards, I'm afraid to say." Link was beginning to nod off again in the darkness of the stables, the patter of rain on the rooftop as much a lullaby as any he'd ever heard.

"_Wonderf_—" Arrika began, before the door was kicked in and a lamp shined down in Link's face. He wasn't sure how he suppressed the reflex to draw Arrika and charge, but he managed it. He betrayed nothing but annoyance as he glimpsed up through the lamplight, hearing some guard challenging him in Ghentese. Apparently security was tighter around here than he'd thought.

"_Arrika, you speak Ghentese, what does this asshole want_?"

"_He wants to know why you're sleeping in the horse stall… duh_."

"_How do I say, 'I like horses, now leave me alone'_?"

Arrika rattled off a string of Ghentese, and Link echoed it as best he was able, stumbling over the nigh-impenetrable pronunciation. The guard immediately lowered the lamp, so that Link was able to see the dumbfounded expression he now sported. Link rolled over to go back to sleep, and the guard stepped away. He managed to get about halfway down the hall before he burst out into a huge belly-laugh that quickly receded into the distance. Suddenly, Link realized that he'd asked for a translation from an entity with a twisted sense of humor.

"What did I just say to that guard, Arrika?" Link asked, no nonsense in his tone.

"_Use your imagination_," Arrika advised him, the laughter concealed between the words.

"Seriously, what did I say to him?"

"_Wouldn't you like to know_?"

"ARRIKA!"

She taunted him with a sudden giggling that echoed inside his head, and he slumped in awful resignation. Clearly, this was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

**Inner Audience Chamber, **_**Chateau du Sud**_**, The Principality of Ghent**

Jeanette sat in the position of honor at the wide meeting table in the keep's most lavishly decorated room. Around her was her impromptu entourage, Christine with her babe at her breast and Miranda with a neutral, serious look. Little Monica was doing her best to keep from fidgeting in the serious atmosphere, and yet, Jeanette had to admit that they were holding up perfectly. The deception was hardly as complete as she could have wished, her lacking most all of the staff and servants she would be expected to have accompany her anywhere, but the pretext of her traveling secretly should cover that, and the number had to be kept down. You could only include so many people in a conspiracy and hope for it to remain secret, after all.

"What's all this then?" A large, middle-aged man burst into the room with a huff and a rush of air that shattered the uncomfortable silence and made all the girls jump in shock. The man's full brown beard and mustache gave his youthful face a powerful sense of dignity, which he proceeded to destroy with eyes that flashed with laughter. "Jeanette?" his confrontational front dissolved the moment he laid eyes on her.

"Uncle Pierre?" Jeanette was caught totally off guard, and her face burst into a glow of utterly genuine happiness. No one had been able to confirm who the commander of the fortress currently happened to be, and this of all people was a wonderful surprise. She stood from her spot at the table and abandoned all dignity to scramble over and embrace him.

"Ah, my darling Princess, it is the Goddess' own blessing to see you well!" The man could hardly be parted from hugging her long enough to explain himself. "The nation is in turmoil, the nobility in an uproar—and no one knew where you were! When I heard someone claiming to be you had shown up here, I was certain it was a fraud. I don't think I've ever been so happy to be totally wrong in all my years!"

"Oh, Uncle Pierre, I never wanted to worry anyone!" Everything about Jeanette, from the way she carried herself, to the fluttering of her eyes, and especially her voice, were all completely different as she addressed this man. Her partners in conspiracy couldn't help but notice it, and Link's head would probably have spun to see her revert so completely and suddenly to the vacant creature she'd been before that evening in the swamp. "The trip out of the country wasn't my idea at all. I was so sick, and the doctors here couldn't treat it! Now I'm finally home, and everywhere I go I hear these dreadful rumors! Please, tell me what has happened here?"

"Ah… of course…" The man called Pierre suddenly looked utterly crestfallen. "I really can't think of any easy way to say this, Jeanette, but my cousin, your father, and your mother both… they've… passed away."

Jeanette gasped, her face freezing in a look of utter shock that she had to fake only by half. She'd been preparing herself for that news for days, ever since she'd first come to terms with the idea that the coup the Hylian had described was real. Now she found herself pouring out bitter tears, her kind, clueless Uncle almost in tears himself to see her in this state.

In a way the tears were real, because a young girl had just lost her only parents. But, in another way, they were the most contrived device an actress had ever put on display. This is because Jeanette, who would be fifteen in three months, had already decided that her parents would have to go, even if they somehow survived her Uncle Sebastein's plotting. Now, she almost _owed_ that snake for doing away with her parents so she wouldn't have to muster the courage to have it done herself. After all, traitors like her mother and father deserved no other fate.

Her bitter feelings toward her parents had a perfectly reasonable source—she'd realized two days past that they'd poisoned her in perhaps the foulest manner imaginable. Jeanette had been born special, after all, enlivened by a condition that made children mature mentally much faster than normal. It was a rare thing, and while among the common people it was considered a mere novelty for six-to-ten-year-old children to go around opening shops or mastering professions, in the nobility it was known as a stigmatic freakishness. She'd spent her premature maturity under the directive to behave like a normal child, and out of self-preservation as much as duty, she'd learned to fake the vapid selfishness of a pre-pubescent, spoiled child.

Jeanette's memory became a foggy blur as early as one year ago. Her last clear thought was taking tea with her mother. She sipped from her cup to find it unusually bitter, and then her concern for that melted away into uncomplicated joy. Uncomplicated joy was about all she could recall for a frighteningly long time. And then, she'd sipped that foreigner's curative draught, and been cured of the 'cure' for her condition. Now she was here, weeping crocodile tears for the parents that had tried to numb her into complacent stupidity, almost certainly so they wouldn't have to suffer the embarrassment of her brilliance when they could hide it no longer.

Kind, innocent Uncle Pierre held her shoulder like he was handling a delicate infant animal, his own heart breaking to see her so put-out.

"Come, come, Jeanette, it is a bitter draught to swallow, I know, but I am here for you, and I know your Uncle Sebastein will be overjoyed to hear of your return. He and the entire nation have been frantic to discover where the Prince hid you. Your arrival here now can be nothing short of divine providence."

Jeanette said nothing, but let her display of inconsolable waterworks wear on. In her mind, she saw Sebastein Orlouge laughing himself silly over the corpses of her mother and father, and patting himself on the back about the way he'd had her spirited off to set the whole thing up in the first place. It must be divine providence indeed—nothing short of the manifest blessing of The Mother herself could have delivered the Hylian and his mistress to her aid, and slipped her away before the trap could irrevocably close on her life. Now she and her unexpected allies were about to turn that brilliant piece of treachery into the noose Sebastein Orlouge would hang upon.

Maybe. Perhaps he would have his uses still, and she would keep him around. That situation had yet to develop, even as this one had come together with wonderfully unexpected ease. She allowed herself to be led away to an open guestroom in the castle's dusty noble's quarter, satisfied that things couldn't be going better here. Distracted by her distress, Duke Pierre Orlouge, Lord of the Southlands, hadn't even asked why she had an entirely new staff.

**Three Days Later: Monseille, The Principality of Ghent**

"Milord?" a messenger stepped into his office, and Sebastein Orlouge looked up in annoyance from the fifth petition of pardon for Sergeant Commander D'tannen he'd had to veto this week. These things were usually expedited in matters of treason, but only the Monarch could give an unchallengeable order of execution, and whatever capacity he'd been acting in this past week since his beautiful plan had come to fruition, he hadn't been crowned yet. Meanwhile, the man's loyalists were not only flooding the legal process with one delay after another, they were also in control of the walls and gates, including the jailhouse. It was impossible even to have the blasted man's throat cut in the dark of night. Only the fact that he'd been silenced by that nerve toxin let the Duke keep his hair, and the timer on that reprieve was ticking slowly away too.

Burdened by these thoughts, the Duke nodded at the messenger, who marched in and handed him an envelope dressed in high-priority military markings. The messenger let himself out, and his lord opened the message, briefly noting it to be from his cousin, the man in line for the throne after him, actually, Duke Pierre Orlouge of the Southlands.

Two minutes later, he was reading the letter again, willing his eyes to slow down enough to actually take in and process what he thought he'd just read, because obviously he'd misread it the first time. It couldn't possibly say what it said, but it _did_, and he screamed violently as he jumped to his feet and tore the letter to tattered shreds, as if his pure vitriol could somehow make this sudden nightmare disappear.

When his vision cleared of the red haze, Duke Orlouge staggered back into his chair. The little slut was alive. The little slut was alive, _and_ the trolls were mobilizing for war. He couldn't quite believe either fact, but the one did go with the other, and the only reason Pierre could possibly have to lie was—

The Duke paused, his apprehension clearing as he grew a bemused, wondering smile. Could that be it? Was that little snot actually trying to outmaneuver him? Pierre had shown himself to be an almost disgustingly kind, honest man, and so it hardly fit what little he knew of the fellow. But still… it was certainly more likely that the man had suddenly grown a pair and was making his own bid for the throne than it was that a bubble-brained little bed-warmer-to-be like the princess had escaped from the Southern Swamp, a place none had returned from since the Great Troll Wars. And yet… best to be sure.

On his desk was the enchanted brazier that his troll counterpart used to contact him. He darkened the room and performed the small ritual over it that would cause it to contact her in turn, and was rewarded with a response within ten minutes. When he was certain he had her ear, he began with the most oblique approach he could manage.

"Thereva," he addressed the troll queen by name, "What's this I hear about your army mobilizing? It seems some war beads turned up around the border and now my people are throwing a fit."

"Ya 'eard about dat den?" her voice was its usual harsh, filthy mangling of his language. She cursed in Trollish, and the man who'd called to be reassured found himself totally caught off guard by his former ally. Apparently she assumed he already knew of her betrayal and had called to taunt her, because she attempted no duplicity. "Well, a 'uman stopped bai during an importahnt cerahmony, and 'e was da cause ahv da deadliest distatah in Troll 'istory. Da chieftains took it ahs an act ahv war, and I don 'ave da juju ta convince dem odderwise. So… we jus gonna 'ave ya 'ole country fah dinnah. Ah'd say it wahs nice knowin' ya, but ah'd be lyin'."

"What are you saying?" Orlouge was nearly struck mad as his carefully lain plans disintegrated. "I'm all ready to move on Hyrule, all you have to do is back your armies down and I'll be able to hand you their treasure on a silver platter! Turning on me now is madness!"

"Ah 'aven't any choice, an' I 'onestly don care dat mach, ya' know? I get what ah wan eider way, just in a differen' ordah." She laughed a deep, chilling, evil laugh. "Ah… dis was meant as a surprise, baht what da 'ell? Considah ya country 'on da menu' Or-lou-ge!" Her laughter trailed away as the fire glowing above the brazier suddenly blazed higher, scorching a mark onto his ceiling. Just when he thought it was dying down again, it exploded, and he was saved from burns only by ducking under his desk. When the smoke cleared, the men stationed outside his room had broken his locked door down.

For a moment, he wondered why no one was checking on him, until he climbed up over the desk again and saw all of his guards staring in horror down at the floor. He followed their gaze, and for a moment, his eyes couldn't make sense of what they were seeing. When they finally did, it was such a shock that he had to look away or loose his breakfast.

There on the floor were the sparse remains of a human body. The damage done to it was so extensive that it wasn't immediately recognizable as such, and the barest contemplation of the extent to which it had been mauled and twisted was sickening. What was worse was that the face was still recognizable as the Earl of Bayshore. His mouth was venting smoke and a blooming tatter of ashen paper, and the Duke was horrified to note that this was the very treaty he'd been sent to deliver. There were no more illusions for the Duke to hide behind now, he'd been undone.

"Sir… what is all this?" Orlouge's second in command was looking to him for guidance, his wits scattered by the lack of any kind of reasonable explanation for what he was seeing.

"What does it look like?" the Duke snapped, using anger to cover his own rattled wits. His schemer's mind scrambled for workable lies, until he finally continued, "It's an assassination attempt, you blithering idiot! Dark sorcery is at work here, trying to burn me up in my own home!" Gasps of horror went around the room as everyone latched onto this explanation with the utter certainty of the terrified being led by the nose.

"But… but…" his lieutenant wasn't quite satisfied, but Orlouge didn't give him time to come up with reasonable questions.

"Look!" he picked up the military envelope his bad news had come in, "not even twenty minutes after I received news of the trolls mobilizing at the border, and now this! It doesn't take a genius to know that they've finally decided to pay us back for 300 years ago! They've been attacking us at the top to set the stage for their invasion!"

"Do you mean… the _Prince_?" Orlouge's lieutenant went even paler. "But… you said the Hylians—"

"And I haven't ruled it out yet. I wouldn't put it past those mongrels to sell the trolls equipment and information for their assassination on my beloved brother! But those dogs will have to wait. There's no time to waste!"

Orlouge made a decision right then and there. Maybe Jeanette was alive, defying all odds and his best scheme ever, and maybe she wasn't. One way or another, he'd see himself in the throne some might say was rightfully hers, but a throne would do him no good if his kingdom was being chopped up for troll cook-pots. His victory, and of course, the rape of Hyrule, would just have to wait until he put these filthy, bestial man-eaters in their proper place.

"Muster my personal guard! I'll be riding out to meet the army as soon as possible. If we don't march south immediately, there'll be no stopping them!"

His guards snapped into action around him; there were messages to be sent and preparations to be made. Orlouge, despite the utter dissolution of all he'd worked toward, still felt only moderately set-back. Even if, by some awful miracle, Jeanette was still alive… well then so what? As far as she knew, he was still her loving uncle. There would be all the time in the world for her to meet some tragic accident, or hell, barring that, she would certainly need a regent until she could be properly married.

Marriage! Now there was an avenue he hadn't explored yet. Perhaps he could find a nice puppet of a Caredan Don to play marionette to his strings while distracted with his new toy—er—bride. Ah, but those were considerations for after this little war was won.

**_Cheateu du Sud_****, The Principality of Ghent**

Jeanette sat awake in her bed and contemplated the makings of her eventual victory. The situation between her and her Uncle the Traitor was at a stalemate. He'd announced her as missing, assuming she'd never be found and that he could reluctantly accept the position of Prince. Only now word of her re-emergence had spread far and wide at the speed of the royal post as she sent letters to everyone she knew by even the slightest familiarity, heartily acting the brainless sop just recently reconnected to society. That meant she was officially back in line for the throne—Orlouge of the Northlands couldn't hope to press his station as anything more significant than regent while she still breathed. Unfortunately, he still commanded every stitch of the regular army worth noting, and if he wanted to make a fight of it, there was little she could do to stop him.

Of course, there was a difference between having the power to rule the nation, and having the legitimacy to wield that power. Jeanette had confidence that the soldiers themselves would generally balk at any orders to oust her, and that the people at least would stand behind the rightful line of succession, which the Duke could never claim while she lived. That made the next trick an act of _survival_. In fact, she had no fear of assassination either, not when everyone was presented with the much more real threat posed by the trolls.

It couldn't be much longer now before they finished mustering, and _Chateau du Sud_ was a lot closer to the Southern Swamp than it was to the Hylian border. The chances of the regular army arriving before the trolls could lay siege to this fortress and begin to pillage the countryside were slim at best, and there was a powerful air of tension around the area as efforts to mount a defense were redoubled. Orlouge of the Southlands had already collected the Sergeants in command of every local militia unit and began planning to concentrate them into a mobile army. It would leave the villages exposed, but the main concern now was not small raiding parties.

The most conservative estimates, based on the sheer number of war beads that Manuel had captured, was that the trolls would outnumber any force they could assemble by three to five times. It was a sobering thought, and all across the borderlands, people that had been clinging to their homes now finally packed what they could carry and fled northward. Many of the irregular soldiers looked like they would much like to do the same, but discipline held them here along with exhortations for them to stay and cover their families as they fled. Despite this bit of fortune, it was an entirely dire situation.

"Knock, Knock?" a voice came in clearly from her window, and Jeanette sat up in bed and held her blankets up over her nightgown for modesty. The poison that had reduced her to a muddle-brained pre-teen had also loosened all of her inhibitions, the better to make her into a pliable wife, and even now Jeanette remembered those days of quasi-nudity in agonizing embarrassment. Still, this was one visitor she'd been expecting, and she mumbled a confirmation that she was alone. Well, not quite alone, as Monica was sleeping in the room's servant cot, but she hardly counted for this meeting.

The Hylian vagabond climbed up into her room through her window and quickly secreted himself against the wall beneath it to better elude any wall sentries' eyes. Granted that they'd be looking the other direction, but he hardly needed to be _caught_ after going to all the trouble of scaling the keep's walls and circling around the tower to this inward-facing window. That he was sitting here in her room, hardly even breathing heavily after that nigh-impossible climb, was a source of new amazement to the princess. Every day, the impossible feats she'd witnessed in the swamp threatened to fade into a dream of a memory, and then he did something like this and denied her the chance to rationalize his impossible ability.

"Good night, Your Majesty," Link said, tossing her a playful salute as he lounged back against her wall in a comfortable sprawl. "I'm expecting a call from our mutual friend any moment, but I just wanted to say, good job with this whole messy thing. I saw the messengers leaving and the soldiers arriving both, and it seems like you've more or less got a kingdom again."

"That remains to be seen," Jeanette sniffed, as usual completely unsure of how to deal with this man. For the most part, if a person wasn't intimidated by her rank, he or she was intimidated by her beauty. This man had never _really_ stopped treating her like the half-naked waif he'd plucked from death's door, despite a pretense to the contrary, and she was finding it extremely frustrating. Dealing with someone who simply refused to be cowed into an inferior position was entirely outside of her experience.

"While I have to admit that Uncle Pierre being in command here was an unexpected stroke of luck, Uncle Sebastein could still make trouble. He'll try at least one assassination attempt, given the opportunity, and I'm not sure yet if I can block his inevitable bid for regency. Remember, we have no proof that he's betrayed me, or that he's the one who killed my father. Without that, he's free to make the next move, and I have no _real_ power until I'm coronated on my twentieth birthday."

"Damn. Well, I was hoping to see that snake roast, but I suppose we have to deal with the trolls before anything else. I've never seen a full-scale war before… it should be educational."

"Ah? Something the freakishly capable warrior is ignorant of?" Jeanette teased, hoping to have an angle to dig at him from, but he merely shrugged.

"Wars are hard to come by, where I come from. Anyway, as long as we're talking about freaks, I have my suspicions about you, with all due respect, of course, Your Majesty." The last-moment nod to formality did nothing to disguise the lightness he was treating her with, and she frowned. "Oh, don't be like that," he chided her immediately, "one of my best friends is three feet tall and already the greatest merchant I've ever known. What I can't figure out is why you bothered with that air-headed-tart act back in the swamp. It's been bugging the hell out of me."

"It wasn't an act," Jeanette said, deciding that the quickest way to settle this was with honesty. She was shocked by her own decision, but found herself rationalizing it easily. Those of her countrymen that could even understand this man would never believe a word he had to say, so he made a rather convenient confidant. That he didn't fear her at all made him unique in another way, and suddenly she found herself unburdening her pained heart onto him with no ability to stop herself. In moments she'd related the brief version of her life's story, and she watched carefully as his face went through exactly _none_ of the phases of pity and disgust she'd expected and feared.

"Your own parents did that to you, huh?" was all he said, when she'd finally gotten herself under control again. This man was frightfully easy to talk to, and already she regretted what she'd said, even as she felt worlds better for having spoken freely to someone after a lifetime of enforced secrecy. "I have to admit, I've been learning all kinds of new things lately. You know, not a year ago, I'd never have imagined that a Royal could even ponder a dishonest act? I was, so to speak… a sheep. Or maybe that kind of thing was just so far above me that I never gave it a second thought. Now, I've met with and dealt with more royalty in the past few months than I'd ever hoped or dreamed to glimpse in a passing parade before that, and I've started to understand how wrong I was. The gods and goddesses give you the mandate to rule… but you're all still just people, aren't you?"

Jeanette had never given divine right a second thought, herself, and his bringing it up this way proved an excellent distraction from her discomfort over having confessed herself to him. In her mind, the argument that the Prince sat on the throne of Ghent because the Mother Goddess granted him divine providence was little more than a way to mollify the masses to the yoke they'd been clapped under. Now, with the evidence of miracles as real as the life she'd been granted against all probability, she had to give it a second look.

"I must admit, it most certainly seems that The Mother is watching over me," Jeanette admitted, eventually. "She sent you to me, after all, and to this I owe my life, just as to your friends and mysterious ally, I owe my current success. What do you think? Are our mutual goddesses playing games, with us as the pieces?"

"Maybe so…" Link said, but he looked absolutely distraught as he did. "It looks more like it every day, in fact."

A dour silence fell after that, and lasted until the mystery woman used her magic stone to contact them. Jeanette took the stone from the Hylian wanderer and launched into the discussion she'd been preparing for most of the last few days, detailing this and that feature of her progress and all the new developments she was aware of. The two traded facts in whispered Ghentese, and the man was left to linger, excluded. As usual, the woman astonished her with everything from her ability to recall facts to her powerful grasp of all varieties of information. Shortly, they'd finished their commiserations, and Jeanette found herself with one final thing to say.

"As well, mademoiselle," she said in Ghentese, "I must express how impressed I am with your agent. I was quite unable to keep myself from unburdening all my secrets to his ears. I fear I've quite betrayed myself, and that it is _your_ doing."

"Oh?" the woman responded, and there was a laugh in her voice, but not a victorious one. "So you noticed that too? I fear he has that affect on everyone, myself included. I doubt the obstinate jerk will tell me any whisper of your secrets, just as I'd expect him not to mention any of mine to you. I feel I can trust you to know that he's far less my 'agent' than you seem to imagine, despite all appearances."

For some reason, Jeanette believed her. The man didn't strike her as the kind of person to go spreading around gossip, or even talking very much at all, and perhaps that was another reason it was so easy to confide in him. He also didn't seem like the kind of person to be yoked by authority, even if the handler of that authority was this astonishing mystery woman. He certainly _seemed_ to take her direction like a lackey, but appearances could be deceiving, after all.

Knowing this now, Jeanette couldn't help but look at him a little differently. Despite herself, she felt an interest stirring in her immature body, the same interest she'd felt in the swamp while unburdened by anything resembling a reservation or deep thought. She rushed to strangle that feeling in its infancy, but she could not do as much with her curiosity.

"If that is indeed the case, then what exactly _is_ your relationship?" Jeanette asked. She knew she was prying, but it couldn't hurt to ask. Tonight seemed like a night for penetrating secrets, anyway.

"Link and I are…" the woman paused. There was a quaver of deeper emotion to her voice now. The circumstances of anonymity on her part had to be intoxicating. She could say anything she wanted, really, and never have it come back to her, considering the advantage she had over Jeanette. Still, with all that, she hesitated, showing either the depth of her prudence or the extent of her uncertainty and embarrassment. "_allies_. Allies and… friends… I suppose. Why do you ask?"

"Only friends…?" Jeanette asked, the faintest glimmer of a forming plan hinted in her tone. It was a flight of fancy to be sure, but even intelligent people were allowed to have impossible, silly dreams. For teenage girls, this was double true.

"Oh, I wouldn't go getting any ideas," the woman from the stone sounded like she'd caught on to Jeanette's train of thought. Clearly, it amused her. "Link is married to his wanderlust, as far as I can tell. That or his sword. You'd do better to look elsewhere, even as a fantasy, I assure you. Although… I'll admit you're never likely to find his equal."

"Do I detect a hint of jealousy?" Jeanette teased the woman, having finally gotten an angle on her she could exploit to her advantage, and also just for a little fun. The woman sputtered indignantly, telling her she'd scored a direct hit. "Or perhaps… it is guilt I hear? Has a certain 'friend' been featuring this warrior in her own flights of fancy?"

"That's quite enough of that!" the woman closed the subject, but Jeanette was smiling mischievously.

"Of course. I would not want to injure your dignity, mademoiselle," she relented. "Clearly you are afflicted by the same roadblock I've found. He's out of our reach, is he not? A commoner, and taboo. And of course, he would not give this body of mine a second look anyway… although in five years time… he could be quite the distraction…"

"That is quite enough. This conversation is over." The stone flickered and died down to its normal level of light. Jeanette stared at it for a moment and tried not to feel too victorious. That woman was obviously a Hylian noble of some kind, perhaps even her counterpart, the Hylian Princess. It was all speculation, of course, but she'd certainly reacted like a noblewoman, betraying herself as she'd been quite careful to avoid before. Perhaps _he_ was her weak spot. Jeanette filed all that information away as she prepared to part ways with them both for the time being.

The next phase of the operation, which involved little more than surviving until the war had been decided one way or the other, had been more or less planned out. The situation was moving out of their hands, and back to the men they depended upon for such brute endeavors. This was actually their last planned meeting until the conflict had been resolved, as Link had to be mobile again when the fighting broke out in earnest.

"I sincerely hope this is not the last time I see you," Jeanette told Link when she handed back the whispering stone. If he noticed any deeper meaning, she couldn't tell, and she damned the fate that left her in a child's body, the same fate that had plagued her all her life. Only time would change that, and time was something she didn't have as far as her relationship to him was concerned.

Careless as a rogue wind, he gave her a nod and a toothy smile, and then turned to collect his gear and leave. He hefted the sword he'd been idly handling while he waited, and for an instant, its hilt was lit by the full light of the moon. The unusual white gems that formed the center of its decoration sparkled with a haunting glow, and the vision speared into Jeanette's memory.

"My Sweet Goddess!" she shouted, far too loudly, and had to clamp down over her mouth reflexively. Yet, the damage was done. Monica instantly sat up in bed with a start and it was only seconds more before an urgent knock at her door announced that the castle's maids had heard her as well. Link was startled into a moment of paralysis, but recovered with just enough time to leap into the crevice between her bed and the wall an instant before the door opened.

Jeanette had a flustered moment of confusion before she could come up with a lie to send the lady away, her incoherence fortunately playing well to her explanation of bad dreams. When they were safely alone again, Monica asked what had really happened, and the princess gave her a dirty look.

"Was that really necessary?" Link asked, as he clawed his way out from the awkward angle he'd landed at. Jeanette didn't answer, because she was staring at something with a look of near-religious awe in her eyes. Link followed the gaze and found it on his sword.

**Minutes Earlier**

"_They're talking about _you_, ya know_," Arrika told him, breaking the counter-intuitive press of monotony that somehow managed to come while waiting in the private chambers of a famously beautiful girl after dark.

"_Yeah, right_," Link had decided to take everything the disembodied woman said from now on with a grain of salt. For the most part, he'd found Arrika to be surprisingly entertaining, with seemingly limitless knowledge about this and that subject that she was never too bothered to explain to Link when things were slow. At the same time, she had the oddest sense of humor, and while she was certainly much more engaging and personable than either Zelda or Midna, he just couldn't trust what she said in any but the most serious circumstances. "_I'm so sure that two women charged with protecting the better part of a fourth of the whole continent are spending this secret meeting gossiping about a goat wrangler who hasn't bathed properly in days_."

"_Hey, hey_," there was a laugh in her tone, "_you don't have to believe me, but it _is_ true. My, they're getting quite catty about it too_. _That Jeanette has got quite the mouth on her, and Zelda is way too easy to fluster. You'd think they were sisters, the way they're going on. It's almost sickening. Oh, they seem pretty serious now. There might even be wedding bells in your future._"

"_HA_!" Link knew she was joking now. "_I'm an orphan ward of a village that's greatest claim to fame is a perennial top-ranking spot in the regional cheese festival. I have a better chance of marrying _you_ than wedding into a royal family. The most I'd ever be to a princess is a boy-toy, and I'm not about to enter any kind of relationship where I'd have to sneak around to halfway enjoy it, anyway_. _It's just not my idea of a good time._"

"_Well, listen to you, Mr. Convictions_," Arrika seemed genuinely impressed. "_Most men would jump at the chance to bed royalty, and let the consequences be damned. I guess those two will have to learn some humility to be ready for when you shut them down_."

"_Are you still going on about this_?" Link complained. It was a little far to carry a joke, especially one so crude. Princesses were nowhere on his social menu, unless it was listing who he was cooperating with to best protect Hyrule. That he was so intimately embroiled with them already was more of liability than anything else, as far as he could tell. He was about to give Arrika a piece of his mind for being so perverted when Jeanette interrupted him by handing him back the whispering stone.

Realizing his cue to leave, Link began to inventory his equipment.

Link lifted Arrika's sword to weave it back into his harness, and Jeanette let out a sudden loud shout of surprise that practically shocked Link out of his skin. There was no question that it was noticed, and he was torn over the best way to hide. If he ducked out the window without being ready for the climb, he'd have to just hang there until whoever checked was gone again, however long that might take. That was far too long to be hanging on a wall with all these sentries about, and… and… and his hesitation was really taking far too long too!

"_Behind the bed_!" Arrika decided it for him, and he leaped back that way, becoming lodged in the tight space and practically dislocating his shoulder. There was some talking in Ghentese, and soon everything was quiet again. Link crawled back up ready to raise hell at Jeanette, princess or no, after she almost blew the whole operation, but choked up when she turned out to not be listening. She was staring at Arrika's sword, in fact.

"_Uh… oh boy. Looks like I've been made. I was wondering if my reputation was still up to snuff these days_." Link almost asked her what she meant, but the situation went out of his hands far too quickly.

"Bijou Blanc!" Monica barely managed to keep her shriek of delight and wonderment quiet, and the words seemed to snap Jeanette out of her reverie by confirming her own recognition. Both of them were staring at Arrika's sword now, and little Monica actually scrambled across the room to get a closer look. The expressions of fixed amazement and awe on both petite ladies was giving Link a distinct sinking feeling.

"So… uh… you know something about this sword?" Link said, realizing he sounded utterly lame. He wasn't the least bit prepared for anyone to spot Arrika's blade as anything special, and he kicked himself for his stupidity.

"Where did you get that?" Jeanette asked, angry gravel in her voice as her awe slowly boiled into fury.

"Huh? Well…" Link quickly weighed the benefits and risks of lying. "I found it in the swamp, to be perfectly honest. It struck me as a charming weapon, and I'd lost my own sword, so I… uh… appropriated it from the tomb it was decorating. The place was a mess anyway, and I couldn't stand to see such a beauty of a weapon rust away in the dump."

"_Smooth one, Link_." Arrika gave him active criticism of his attempt at duplicity. "_Just go right ahead and _admit_ you robbed the grave of their nation's greatest hero in recorded history_."

"You _found_ it? You just… _found_… the single most famous lost treasure in all of Ghent? My Goddess… you have a fool's luck! It is almost too much to be borne!" Jeanette shook her head in an almost dazed wash of astonishment. Apparently, for all her talk of fate, she'd yet to come to terms with divine intervention quite like Link had.

"Honestly…" Link tried to play the whole thing off, as if it were possible. "I'm surprised to hear you recognize it. Granted it's easily the finest sword of its type I've ever come across—"

"_HEY! What's this, 'of its type' crap?_"

"—But I never thought it would be _famous_…"

"Famous…?" Jeanette looked at him like he was crazy, stupid, or both. "Link, you're holding an item that is either a cultural heirloom or religious artifact, depending on which version of the history you find more appealing." Monica chimed in with something now, and Jeanette giggled girlishly at the younger child's perception of Link's confusion. "She wants you to know that 'Bijou Blanc is the weapon the Lady Hero used to chase the trolls all the way back into their swamp.' You see, even a child knows it, and with good reason. There's a forty-foot mural on the side of the Mother's Cathedral in Monseille that depicts the Lady Hero wielding it."

"_What? A crummy _mural_? Those cheep bastards! The original plan was for a fifty foot statue! Link, is there any chance we could go hunt down the descendants of a few scum-sucking_—"

"No kidding?" Link didn't have to fake his impressed expression. "Well, thanks for the history lesson, I'll make sure to take good care of this. I'm sure this Lady Hero of yours would appreciate the use I intend to put her weapon to as well."

"No, Link, I don't think you understand," Jeanette shook her head, "this changes everything! Do you know what a morale coup it would be if we could somehow rally the army behind the very same symbol that drove back the trolls 300 years ago? Men would fight with five times the fury, they'd fight without fear! That's the kind of thing that makes people feel like destiny is on their side!"

"Ah, yeah, you mean you want the 'Lady Hero' to show up in a 'manifest miracle' and rally the army?" Link caught her drift clearly enough, and hated to be the one to burst her sudden enthusiastic turn. "There's a problem with that. I wasn't going to mention it unless it came up, but this sword is rather magical. It can't even be held by anyone but me without trying to break his arm. Sorry."

"Well… yes… the stories all said that only Jean Orleans could wield Bijou Blanc, but that begs the question of why _you_ can." Her suspicious expression smoothed out, and a smile slowly came to her lips. "On the other hand, I think there's still a way we can make this work. Quickly, contact that woman of yours again. We might be able to work something out…"

"_I think I know what she has in mind…_" Arrika drawled, a tang of mischief coloring her voice. "_This promises to be HILARIOUS. I praise whatever gods brought us together, Link. I haven't had this much fun in millennia._"

Link found himself surrounded by excited women, and for one reason or another, he was unable to enjoy the fact in the slightest. All that, and Jeanette had the most devious expression lingering on her pristine lips. It did not bode well for him at all.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

In my opinion, this chapter more or less marks the high-water mark for book one, and edges toward the best part of the story as a whole. Certainly when combined with the action sequence in the next chapter, it makes a more than adequate climax to book one. Truly, when I read the running summary I produced to start this chapter, I shake my head in wonder and desperately try to divine why I can't produce work that good when I write original fiction. I have to go back and wonder if I actually wrote it or if I got myself mixed up with some other, much more talented writer. Then I read chapters like the previous one, riddled with errors, and remember that it's just little old me.

The huge problem with this chapter goes back to the problem of serialized fiction. I didn't decide to make Jeanette a child savant (similar to Malo from the original Twilight Princess game) until I was about sixty percent of the way through last chapter. Thus the plot twist wasn't properly foreshadowed, and ends up thoroughly jarring. I tried to soften it a bit with minor revisions in this second full overhaul, but it remains a point of regret for me with the story as a whole.

On a fairly meaningless personal note, I completely lost my original copy of this chapter. I had to export the copy on ffnet to edit it. As a result of not having this one on hand, all my chapters are misnumbered on my computer after this one. Funny, huh? Well, its fixed now.


	13. White Plains Red

**The Golden Power**

**Chapter 13: The Battle of White Plains Red**

**Trophy Room, _Chateau__ du__ Sud_, The Principality of Ghent**

"I hate this plan!" Link said, nearly pouting. "You all can take it and shove it right up your—"

"LINK!" Zelda cut him off before he could even begin to be as offensive as he wanted to be. "I understand we're asking a lot of you, but this tactic virtually guarantees victory. With these resources in reach, we'd be slitting the Ghentese soldiers' throats with our own hands if we _didn__'__t_ try it."

"And yet, why is it that _I _have to be the one to do it?" Link snapped right back. "I don't really see myself as terribly qualified to pull it of, you know?"

"We've been over this, the sword is integral to the overall illusion—it's the selling point," Jeanette sighed out the same explanation for the twelfth time, "Since only you can even carry it around, you're the one who'll be standing in for _her_."

"My, that's a good point," Link shouted, sarcastic as hell. "Allow me to provide a counter-point!" Quickly flipping through a series of buckles and lashings, Link was able to pull his harness off in a deceptively complicated motion. Revealed were acres of smooth, muscular skin, and there was a collective intake of breath all around the room's entirely female audience. Link flexed one arm, then the other, the wiry muscles clinging to his bones rippling almost visibly beneath his skin.

Miranda suddenly found the ceiling very interesting, while Christine quickly bundled Monica into her arms along with her baby and placed a hand over her eyes, considering Link with a decidedly unfriendly stare. Jeanette froze stock-still and blushed bloody crimson up to her ears.

"Put it away Link! I think they get the idea." Zelda sounded droll, and also a little bit put-out.

"How did you… I mean, how good have the visuals out of that thing gotten, anyway?" Link said, having more or less made his point. He began picking up his armor and harnessing equipment one item at a time, disentangling the mess he'd made when he shed it and putting it back on again. He'd been angry, and that had made him flip out, but it was a good point anyway.

"I hardly needed to _see_ to know what you did—I could hear the heartbeats taking off like firework rockets." The crew of ladies in the room were all blushing now, except Monica, who was struggling with her mother to see what she so obviously wasn't supposed to see. It was impossible to tell if Jeanette was angry or embarrassed from the furious look she maintained, but it was simple enough to assume both were going full-force in her petite frame.

"Well, anyway, you get the idea," Link, totally unselfconscious in a room full of married women, children, and other such people outside his social domain, got right back to the heart of the matter. "No way you all dressing me up is going to convince _anyone_ that I'm the reincarnation of some famously beautiful warrior. So, granted that it won't work, leave me alone about it!"

"Well, actually, everyone looks quite the same in platemail," Zelda said. She'd been no help at all since Jeanette had first suggested the harebrained scheme, at times sounding adamant about him giving it a try, and at other times, like now, teasing him mercilessly. Now she was referring to the stand of armor that they had stolen into the fortress's trophy museum to examine, the piece nationally renowned as a functional replica of the actual plate worn by Jean Orleans so very long ago. Jeanette had thought of it the moment she'd seen the sword and imagined the possibilities.

"Yeah… right…" Link took another look at the armor. His first defense had been that he'd never fit in women's armor, but Arrika, who never quite stopped sniggering inside his head this entire time, gleefully reminded him that Jean Orleans was six feet five inches tall… apparently big women had been in vogue at the time for her to get her reputation of incomparable good looks. This meant that, if anything, Link was too short, but that hadn't been a sufficient excuse _either_.

Indeed, every time he raised a new complaint, the women explained a fairly easy way around it. The final version of the plan they'd come up with would have Link in a sufficiently padded suit of armor that would give him curves like a fertility goddess and a face-concealing full-helm with a wig of long hair spilling out, Zelda's stone specially amplified to sub in _her_ voice for his body-double job. Link began to sweat as he scrambled for a justification to not do this, so that he wouldn't _just_ be turning them down because he was utterly and implacably opposed to the entire plan.

"How do you expect people to believe that their heroine has just _shown __up_? This isn't exactly the most plausible thing I've ever heard."

"Have you taken a look at the soldiers camping out there?" Jeanette asked. "They're desperate. All you have to do is look across the plains to recognize why. Desperate men will grasp at any straw, and plausibility rarely comes under scrutiny."

Link found himself frustrated in that he couldn't argue with that. The troll army had broken the tree line at around the same time the regular army's first out runners had reached the fortress. It was dusk at the time, and now the two opposing camps stood only half-a-dozen miles apart. Neither side willing to commit to a night-action, the battle would almost certainly come with the dawn. Meanwhile, six miles of open plains were not nearly enough distance to hide the unbelievable number of campfires thrown up by the troll army.

Knowledgeable men knew that each one represented a hunting-party, the basic unit of troll warfare, and a count by starlight placed their forces at around twenty thousand, or double the number of armed men present with a full muster of the regular army and most all of the southern militia. That force was likely to represent every able-bodied male troll in the entire swamp, and rumors of the odds spread throughout the army in no time. No one slept tonight.

"So you figure we can just bash up a little flim-flam of a pyrotechnics show and say, 'Hey—look—the gods are rescuing us!' and that will be enough to sell this charade?" Link tried to sound dubious, but it was hard. His understanding the workability didn't shake his resolve to not play this kooky role, but he had to admit that it did sound more and more convincing.

"Do you understand yet, Link? It's your _responsibility_ to do this." Jeanette turned on the guilt with a show of huge, watering blue eyes. Legendary artists had beaten each other bloody for the privilege to immortalize the visage that was turning all its charm on Link, and he'd be lying if he said it didn't affect him. It just didn't affect him _nearly_ enough for _this_. It was time to just put his foot down.

"Alright, I'll admit you have a heck of a plan, and that it would probably help our chances of winning. I'm _still_ not going to do it."

From the particular partisans of the plan, Jeanette, and to a lesser extent, Zelda, there came a huff of almost pained indignation. They weren't used to people being unreasonable, or perhaps it was just that they were unaccustomed to being refused anything at all.

"If I had to say _why_, it would be that I just don't _want_ to—I mean, like, I _really_ don't want to." Link smirked and sighed with relief, finally back into his armor and harness. "Before you get on my case, let me remind you that I don't even have to _be_ here right now. Would my conscience sting to leave you all in the lurch—_yeah_—but do I have any duty or oath that demands I participate? _No_. I made sure of that much before I even considered signing up for this. So don't go pulling at my loyalty strings—the damn heartstrings are already more manipulation than I can tolerate!"

"Link, you're being entirely unreasonable!" Zelda reminded him. For her part, an inner voice was making several extremely salient suggestions about how to change his mind _for_ him. It would be harder since her power didn't work on his mind, but far from impossible considering the relationship of their two abilities. She ignored that voice, because she truly believed that loyalty was rewarded best with the same. At the end of the day, she wanted a friend an ally more than a tool, even if that railed against her magically-energized sensibilities, and even if lives were at stake.

"Right, I am, but you should have considered that possibility when you recruited me in the first place. Anyway, I'm going to go out there tomorrow morning and carve a bloody path of red ruin to the troll queen's feet. At that point, I'm going to have an intimate discussion of various mysteries she's presented me with, and then I'm going to pay her back for pitching me into that pit of doom."

"_Actually,__I__'__m __pretty __sure_ you _owe_ her _for __that __one__…_"

"_Shut__ it_," Link was on a roll.

"Now, I know I'm not a monarch or a genius of any measure, but it seems to me like this whole 'impersonate the Lady Hero' plan is just a _pathetic_, _weak_ sort of plan, _anyway_." Jeanette sputtered with outrage, her fists clenching in childish anger to hear her scheme so maligned. "What I'm saying is, you're not giving your soldiers half enough credit. Sure, you want to give them heart and confidence in their own ability—I get it. But you're going about it entirely the wrong way."

"And then just _what_ would _you_ suggest, Monsieur?" Jeanette and Link had locked stares, and everyone else was backing away, at least subconsciously, as they dominated the secret meeting room.

"This is _their_ land. Their _homes_ are just north of here. Their _families_." Link was deadly serious now. "If they're truly men, and not spineless dogs, that fact should be more than enough." Link collected this and that item that he'd spilled when he dropped his harness, and then drew up his cloak as he strode toward the door. "You're their leader now, or so I understand. How about you _remind_ them of what's at stake and watch them _prove_ their mettle without the 'Hand of the Mother' coming down from the sky to coddle them like helpless babies?"

Link didn't give her a chance to respond before he slipped out of the room in a silent swirl of cloak fabric. He'd be leaving the fortress tonight, weaving in among the common muster at Manuel's shoulder.

Jeanette stood there in the castle's trophy room and looked around at the various captured troll totems and other artifacts from famous battles and warriors. Her eyes did not see them. In essence, she'd just been handed her own ass by a man who'd learned most of what he knew while knee-deep in dung, and it was an entirely novel experience. She thought about it for a while, and realized that she felt ashamed. This was _her_ country—_her_ people. Why _should_ she rely on a foreigner to inspire them?

**Army of Ghent Command Post, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

Sebastein Orlouge looked at the maps and shook his head, the very will to live nearly extinguished from his body as he contemplated the odds stacked against him. After all his hard work, all his careful planning, it was all going to melt away like sand between his fingers. It was incomprehensible to him that in the end, his own plotting would be the ruin of the nation he so desperately wanted to possess. In all likelihood, it would also be the ruin of his own life, and the lives of all the humans on the entire grassland.

As though it would somehow come out different, he bent his trained tactical mind on the problem he'd been presented with. Just outside the tent, his subordinate nobles and all their sergeants were waiting for him to decide on the deployment they would prepare for the coming dawn. Once again, he attempted to see some way to make this work.

Even a day ago, this entire situation had seemed like little more than a minor setback. He'd force-marched the army those many miles south for the past five days, expecting to arrive only just in time to clean up the trolls after they'd broken upon _Chateau __du __Sud_ and began their disorganized looting of the undefended countryside while their siege held the local forces at bay. There promised to be some casualties, some damage to the southernmost villages, but nothing out of the ordinary for a country so long at war with so implacable a foe.

What he had discovered instead was a force of twice his own number, at least. It seemed impossible that the swamp could possibly hold so many trolls, and yet his scouts had come back at dusk with reports of marching war bands that spread from one horizon to the other, practically unbroken. Never in the past had the trolls fielded such a force, not even 300 years ago, and the Duke finally began to understand exactly why that was, and so why the trolls had ever dealt with him in the first place.

The trolls were divided, a nebulous political organization based on local populations was only barely commanded by their monarch, and so the troll queen hadn't quite dared to challenge him when she could not rely on her people. According to Thereva, the troll capital had been destroyed due to a human attack of some kind, although the Duke could scarcely imagine such a foolhardy thing, and so the tribes had been united. The troll capital was home to representatives from every tribe, after all… the destruction there had stirred up a hornet's next of historic proportions. Now they would feel the fatal sting, it seemed.

Defense was no option. The troll force was so massive that they could lay siege to six fortresses the size of _Chateau __du__ Sud_ and still have a mobile army large enough to sack the entire countryside. He had to engage them here, he had to attack. But… more than that… he had to somehow do enough damage to their army that they would lose stomach for any further excursion into the plains. Unless he defeated their army in detail here, tomorrow, raiding groups would slash northward. The civilian casualties would be horrific, if not absolute.

The pressure weighing down on him was nearly more than he could bare, and he feared he might simply dash out of the tent screaming at any moment. He was no coward, he'd seen plenty of battles in his youth, from skirmishes to the larger engagements that sometimes cropped up when a few troll tribes banded together to go raiding over the border. This though, this was something he was unprepared for—the ultimate responsibility for the safety of his entire nation was weighing down nearly enough to bend him in half… to break him.

His wits had nearly abandoned him—all he could think of was the cold look on his brother's face when he'd tasted the poison medicine delivered by Sebastein's own hand. That face kept flashing through his mind over and over, and with it came a lifetime of fond memories of his brother, their happy youth in rivalry, their shared moments of filial devotion, and all the good times that brothers are bound to accumulate in carefree youth. In the light of his burning jealousy at being passed for the throne, all that had seemed as ash. Now, he knew what it was he'd killed his only brother for, and the terrible gravity of it was wracking his body.

A soft sound startled him out of his reverie of frozen indecision, and he traced it back to the door with wide eyes.

"Sir, is something the matter?" Orlouge's lieutenant asked, "The men are all waiting for the deployment plan." He saw his lord's desperate visage and paused. "If you'd like, I could gather up the staff and draw out the organizational columns. The men are ready to fight, sir. They want to protect the country. We just have to tell them where to stand, and they'll do the rest."

Orlouge, drenched in cold sweat, nodded gratefully. The moment the responsibility had been lightened somewhat, he began to feel a little bit better. Of course, it helped that he was finally beginning to resign himself. One way or another, live or die, they still had to fight. There really wasn't any choice here at all.

**Minutes Before Dawn, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

Jeanette stood on the hastily-built review podium and looked out over ten thousand faces lit by torchlight. Some faces were gruff, weathered, and resigned, and these belonged to the veterans who knew exactly what the dawn would bring. Others were pallid, nearly gone waxen from a sleepless night of anxiety, and these belonged to the raw, green recruits and recent draftees. To the last the faces were male, and each and every one was focused upon her in rapt attention. Somewhere among them was a cloaked, silent figure, his pointed ears pricked to listen to what she had to say just like all the rest.

Faced with such an assembly now, under these circumstances, after living a life sheltered from masculine eyes was enough to make her feel slightly faint, and yet she had every advantage possible to shine brilliantly in this moment. She'd come here to shine, to form a beacon behind which her nation could rally in this moment of need, and for that she needed as much help as she could get.

First of all, she'd changed her appearance to great effect, so that those that knew her barely recognized her. She began by changing into the finest gown that could be had at short notice, an expertly tailored blue affair with long, loose skirts and a gorgeous latticework of black lace and ruffles that made her shine like a polished sapphire in an obsidian filigree. Her long black hair had been pampered in that salon, and now was gathered into a braid that had been knotted into a looping crown of a headdress. The _coup__ de__ grace_, however, was that the bust had been let out of the child's garment, and arranged with support and stuffing enough to give it natural-looking lift. The effect, in concert with her unnatural beauty, was enough to advance her apparent age by four or five years. She now looked quite like a young adult of slight build and unusually small stature, rather than a normal-sized early-teen, and she was more than beautiful enough besides to make a dying man breathe easy with the sight of her.

Next, of course, she was not alone on the platform. At her side for support were her noble Uncles, the supreme commanders of this force, and an assortment of the senior sergeants, paramount among them being Manuel D'tannen, whose overdue promotion up the vast ranks to the lofty position of Sergeant Commander could no longer be blocked. Framed by so many armored men, she looked like a priceless gem under secure guard, and that was half of the idea.

Now was the time, and so she gestured for the speaking-horn in her kind Uncle's armored glove. He hadn't really understood what came over her when she insisted on addressing the army in this goddess-forsaken pre-dawn hour, nor could he completely believe the startling transformation she'd wrought in her appearance, but he was unable to refuse her, as usual. Now she stepped forward before the army, _her_ army, and spoke to her people in her dulcet, surprisingly mature voice.

"Men of Ghent!" she addressed them, and waited for the general murmur to die down, "My name is Jeanette D'Montaigne. I am the last surviving member of the noble line of D'Montaigne that has watched over our beautiful nation for so long! I am the last, because my father, your Prince, a magnificent man who lived a blameless life and cared equally for all his subjects, was _murdered_!"

A murmur of shock and outrage erupted from the soldiers. This information had been little more than rumors to people that had been stranded on an isolated mustering ground or locked inside border outposts. To have it confirmed from a woman who was self-evidently resplendent and could only be the renowned princess was a jarring blow to many. Jeanette let an undertone of anger and lamenting outrage build, and then started to temper that flickering ember.

"I am here now, able to address you like this, only by the provident hand of the Mother, who has shielded me as she so graciously shields us all! My father was not so blessed, for the scheming of this devious enemy overcame even Her divine mercy. This foe, this terrible fiend that so heartlessly murdered our Prince, is _right_ _there_!"

Jeanette pointed in a wide sweeping motion to her right. Sebastein Orlouge, who was standing immediately to her right, went pale in a sudden flush and nearly choked on his own tongue. Fortunately for him, no one had stopped turning at him, but followed the princess' pointing finger to the south, where the torches of the troll army could just be made out on the horizon. A gasp went up as people realized what she was saying, and the Duke breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yes! It was _those_ foul creatures that struck at your Prince—they alone who had the vile gall to murder our beloved monarch! In this, we can understand their black, filthy intentions all too well! You see, my brave soldiers, this is no border skirmish! This is not an isolated incursion that will end in stalemate or retreat! Here, today, is the culmination of a troll plot that has reached to the highest levels of our homeland and beheaded it! Having done this much, do you believe that they mean to stop there?"

No one spoke. The plains rang with the silence as the 'truth' sank in.

"Of course they won't!" Jeanette was shouting passionately now, feeding off the subtle energy of the crowd as she wound them up with her words. "They mean to slay us all! Do you understand that? These are not the Caredans, who so often want our land and money—these are not the Hylians who cower behind their mountainous guard-walls and pretend we are not here—these are our oldest and most deadly foes, and they have no greater ambition than to see each and every one of us dead!"

Once again her voice fell, and so too fell silence. The men were enraptured, and she was sweating with the effort she was putting forth, even now.

"Well, I ask you, Brave Men of Ghent, what do you intend to do? Are you simply going to roll over and allow these beasts to slaughter as they see fit?"

Silence. The audience was too wrapped up to realize that her rhetoric was not at all rhetorical. Thus, she cued them with a bit more force.

"Well, _are__ you_?" she screamed into the speaking horn as loud as she could, jerking them all out of their reverie. As one, their voices rose, and in perfect coordination, they sounded forth.

"_NO_!" they screamed, and the sound shook the very earth. Ten thousand voices raised together to a single prompting, and not even the open sky could contain the din.

"They want to invade your homes! They would love to slice open your women and children and burden their fire-pits with the carcasses! Are you going to let that happen?"

"_NO_!" they all together broke the world with their concerted cheer.

"They want to rob your cities; they want to burn your farms!"

"_NEVER_!"

"Are you going to sit by and watch as they destroy all we love—as they turn our beautiful land into a smoldering charnel-pit?"

"_RAHR_!" every man screamed and gnashed his teeth, worked into a near frenzy by the all-encompassing power of the mob mentality.

"Then I say to you, Men of Ghent, _here_, _now_, _today_ is where we will show them what we think of their plans! We all are the people of Ghent, and You Few are their shield. To retreat today is to allow the trolls to rape and pillage our sovereign land! To surrender is to accept the fate of a fat ox, destined to bare throat and be slaughtered! To this I say _never__ surrender_! _No__ retreat_!"

"_NEVER __SURRENDER!__ NO__ RETREAT!_"

"Then go! _Go_, I say! March forth, and hold no fear in your hearts! Remember that every troll you slay is one more child that will not be gutted and boned like a weighty fish! Every tribe that you crush is one village that need not fear the torch! _Here_ we will fight, and yes, perhaps _die_!" She let that sink in too, and then brought it all to crechendo.

"_But_… even should we _die_ here today, even _then_, we shall die _proud_! We die knowing that no Man of Ghent ever bowed to a filthy troll, or cowered meekly as his land was pillaged! We die knowing that we served our departed Prince with honor! We die knowing we can face the Mother proudly, for our families and homes are safe in the light of our sacrifice! She is watching us even now, and by Her unwavering grace, the vile trolls shall be turned back, just as they were 300 years ago! Here we stand! _Here_! _We_! _Fight_!"

A roar of absolute approval and agreement erupted from the gathered army like a physical force and rushed up to slap against the review platform in a deafening burst. Jeanette lowered the speaking horn, spent by her efforts, and was caught by Pierre Orlouge, who, along with all the others that had known her before today, was staring bulge-eyed like he'd just watched a rabbit bite a wolf's head off. Only Manuel had anything like his wits about him, and rushed to recover the speaking horn.

"Jeanette D'Montaigne!" He announced, feeling the rush of the moment, sensing all of history pivoting on its axis in that golden instant, "Future Queen of Ghent!"

There was a sort of hiccup in the crowd as this sentiment rippled outward. Ghent was a land that had been ruled by a man, titled 'Prince' since the end of the long dark ages that had followed the collapse of the ancestor kingdom that had persisted here in olden times. Even Jeanette's mother, the only issue of the last Prince, had been forced to marry a royal cousin so that patriarchy could continue. What Manuel was suggesting was radical to say the least, but here, now, was everyone she'd ever have to impress to pull off the feat of breaking a centuries-old patriarchy, and Manuel had read them just right. At first there was confusion, but Pierre Orlouge, a light coming on in his kind eyes, handed Jeanette to his ill-looking cousin Sebastein and drew his sword.

_BAM_! Pause. _BAM_! He struck the hilt of his sword against his breastplate twice, tapping out a slow beat. He then immediately thrust the blade violently into the air with a defiant rattle. "_LONG__ LIVE __THE __QUEEN_!"

The salute wrought an instantaneous change, and there was a scramble as men with inspiration glinting in their eyes darted for their weapons. _BAM_! Pause. _BAM_! The Duke rang out the two dull notes again, but this time was accompanied by Manuel, and by a good portion of the nearest men of the army. "_LONG__ LIVE __THE __QUEEN_!" they saluted as they stabbed the sky in one motion.

The salute was quickly repeated again, and now a fourth of the army joined in. The next time it was a half. By the fifth cheer, it was unanimous, or near enough to not matter otherwise. The cheer went on and on, and Jeanette found herself in the arms of the traitor.

"I know what you did," She whispered to him as the crowd carried on in her name, confirming her rule by the popular vote of the armed minority. He stiffened in their casual embrace, but she wasn't done. "I know what you did to my parents, and I know what you tried to do to me. My advice to you, Dear Uncle, is to stand and fight, and pray you die in battle, your crimes forever hidden and expunged by your noble end. If you survive, I will ensure that you never know a moment's peace, for your punishment will _not_ come immediately. Oh… but it _will_ come. It might arrive at any moment. Just remember that."

"_LONG__ LIVE __THE __QUEEN_!" the cheer went on as the Duke glared at the young monarch with bilious hate overflowing from his black heart.

"Devil child!" he slurred, "Demonic whore!"

"Regicide," she shot back, "Fratricide," and then turned away from him. She grabbed the speaking horn back and used it to wave to the army, who quieted in expectation. "_Death __to __the __trolls_!" she shouted, "_Glory __to __Ghent_!"

The cheer was repeated exactly that way, echoed by every voice, even those that did not cheer her ascension to power, and she stepped back, blowing kisses to the assembled heroes with expertly managed tears of joy on her face. That was that, for the sun had at last broken the horizon, and the Nobles and Sergeants began to shout orders.

Like eddying tides of water, flowing groups of armed men gathered into formation to begin their march onto the battlefield. Cavalry scrambled to the corrals as the auxiliary units with their crossbows and shields began to form lines. Pikemen and halberdiers hefted their enormous weapons and organized into blocks as the elite shock troopers in their full plate with long swords and kite shields took up position just behind them in the marching order.

The largest battle in known history was about to begin.

**The Military Corral, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

Link sat on Epona and toyed with the blue heraldic tabard he'd donned. It had been explained to him, and he'd understood, that without it there was no way he'd blend into a mounted unit. It just sort of galled him, because he was impersonating one of the personal armsmen of Sebastein Orlouge, and it was that vile man's crest he was wearing. The irony was digging at him, and he was more than ready for this battle to begin.

All around him, other mounted men shivered with anxiety. One man curled in his saddle and vomited quite suddenly, spilling a foul trail down his horse's flank. Link did what he could not to curl a lip at their obvious jitters—not everyone had been sucked dry of anxiety the way he had, it was just difficult to remember sometimes. After all, he had fought alone in the past, more or less exclusively alone in fact, and he now couldn't help but judge all of these men by his own impossible standards.

"Our little sapphire has grown into quite the royal blue diamond, has she not?" Manuel asked suddenly, coming out of nowhere to join Link in the loose cavalry formation they'd be a part of. Link considered that for a moment.

"Talk is cheap," he said, startling the energized, adrenaline-high man with his deadpan reaction to that utterly stirring scene.

"Oh? Well, I'm glad to see you here. Monica made me promise to watch your back. I was nervous when you didn't show up right away last night. Um… where where you?"

"I had to find a grotto, and it's hard as hell without a wolf's sense of smell," Link told him.

"What?"

"Nothing, never mind. Anyway, let's go do this thing. I'm ready to kick some ass."

Manuel couldn't argue with that, and he called to the cavalry to form up on him. Link, who'd never rode in formation in his life, still managed to adjust rather quickly. He hadn't been riding almost incessantly since he was old enough to fit on a horse for nothing, after all.

Their formation wheeled and quickly took up a flanking position on the extreme right side of the long rows of infantry blocks. To their left was a block of heavy cavalry, mounted knights with lances, almost entirely made up of counts and earls and their personal retainers. Beyond that was the rest of the army, crossbowmen in front, polearm-infantry in the middle, and sword-infantry in the third row. On the other side of that was a second block of cavalry that mirrored this side's cavalry in arrangement. All of the Ghentese artillery, or at least the modest portable catapults that counted for such, had been left behind in the hasty march. This would be a battle of men and trolls.

Link looked across the long line they'd formed, and then looked over at the trolls ahead of them, where the sun was just casting its first streaks of direct light across a steep angle to light them properly. Their infantry blocks were half again as wide as Ghent's, and the veraq cavalry on either side of it was double their own mounted force. It occurred to him that, win or loose, a horrific number of living creatures were going to die today. He found the fact that this didn't particularly bother him a little bit disturbing, but he didn't dwell on it.

**The Battle of White Plains Red**

The two gargantuan armies approached one another until just outside of crossbow range, at which point the Ghentese columns stopped dead. The crossbowmen, pride of Ghent, fanned out in front of the force. At the center were the regular army crossbowmen, highly trained and equipped with bows that fired special troll-shot bolts, horrifying things that were an agony for the robust creatures to remove and heal from. On the peripherals of the formation were the much more numerous militia crossbowmen. These brave frontiersmen fought in next to no armor, and although they'd been supplied at the last moment with troll shot, their smaller crossbows did not have the same stopping power.

Trolls are unique among the savage races of humanoids that plague mankind in that they are highly organized. They make steel as fine as any man's and they fight in formations that rival that of any kingdom's army. What they do not have is much in the way of tactical originality. Because of this, the Ghentese veterans knew exactly what to expect. Unfortunately, the sheer number of trolls here today made this a cold comfort.

Right on cue, the first quarter or so of the entire troll infantry mass broke into a sprinting cloud of skirmishers. These trolls were loosely spread to play devil with the crossbowmen and absolutely armed to the teeth with deadly troll javelins and tomahawks. They screamed their furious war cries and closed with the crossbowmen, screening the more vulnerable spear and axe formations behind them from the deadly fire.

As one mass, the crossbows of Ghent spoke their whispering death. In a raucous chorus of firing mechanisms, a cloud of bolts swept forward and cut down a huge portion of the advancing trolls. There was a thunder as men began to wind the heavy mechanisms to reload, and meanwhile the skirmishers never even slowed. Despite their casualties, the sheer number of them would remain a deadly threat.

Horns blasted from both sides of the human army as the heavy cavalry divisions advanced, the light cavalry outside them keeping step. They expanded away from the center of the formation until they were parallel with the edges of the wider troll force advancing, and then broke into a headlong charge. The flower of the Ghentese nobility rushed forward in a storm of armor and horseflesh, gleaming in the dawn sunlight and bristling with lances, closing in on either side of the skirmishers like two great fists ready to grind a long branch into splinters.

There was a horrific impact on either side of the skirmishing formation as the heavy animals with all of their momentum swept right through them. Those that could stumbled away, massing in the center just in time to feel another storm of crossbow bolts, this time much more effective on their closer formation.

And then, just like that, the horns were blowing again and the cavalry was retreating on both sides. The casualties among the skirmishers had been fantastic, but they'd served their purpose well, peppering the humans with deadly javelins, but more importantly, allowing the main force to get well within crossbow range with minimal damage. More important still, they'd drawn out the Ghentese cavalry, and now the troll veraq riders were riding in to engage them and prevent them from implementing their deadly lance-charges with their normal impunity.

Now it was the light cavalry's turn to shine, and with mirrored motions like some great, elegant ballet, they behaved as a screen for their far more valuable and vulnerable counterparts. Never actually engaging, the men-at-arms kept back the troll cavalry, taking quick and grievous casualties from the troll javelins thrown by the mounted warriors. Still, their distraction worked perfectly, and they drew the veraq cavalry forward on each side, allowing the knights to remain unengaged and bringing the troll cavalry directly to the waiting pike formations.

The veraqs suddenly found the cavalry melting away to be replaced by nine-foot spears, and they died in masses as that first momentum carried them into the bristling expanses. Still, there was nothing to stop them from withdrawing either, and they quickly backed off to lick their wounds, javelins flying back to cause light casualties in their wake.

With that, the initial posturing was over, and now it was time for both sides to get down to the nitty-gritty. Ignoring the scattered remnants of the troll skirmishers, the crossbowmen got what shots they could at the oncoming axe and spear units, so numerous and close together that the humans didn't even have to aim all that carefully. They fired their last shots and melted back behind the solid core of halberds and pikes that waited for the troll charge, mixing momentarily with the sword infantry that was even now preparing to spread out to the flanks.

And then, the trolls did something that no one expected in the least. As soon as the crossbowmen withdrew, they drew up to a stop and linked their crude wood and hide shields together. The dumbfounded Ghentese soldiers paused for a moment, and then fumblingly tried to get the crossbowmen back up into position. Before that could materialize, war drums like nothing anyone had ever heard began to saturate the battlefield with their droning beat. Amid the confusion, the ground began to shake, and then it happened.

Midway between the troll lines and the human lines, a gargantuan fist burst forth from the living soil like a giant had just awoken from his nap beneath the earth and now attempted to break free. Men backed away in shock and horror from the unearthly sight, but in an instant it was joined by a second fist, and then both arms pivoted and slapped the earth so hard that many were shaken to their knees. With a great wrenching, a headless torso 'sat up' from the earth itself, shedding great masses of golden white plains grass until a single glowing circle presented in the center of where a man's chest would be on the beast. Instead of a belly, it had a vast maw, and it opened that maw now to reveal a bottomless starry void, making a lie to all the known rules of space.

The humans were too startled even to flee, but they were certainly leaning that way, right up until a single horseman clattered by across the unusually quiet battlefield and dismounted in an acrobatic leap while the horse was still at full gallop. He was immediately before the creature, his back to the Ghentese spear formations. Dumfounded anew, the humans looked on in puzzlement as this madman proceeded to make a series of terribly rude gestures right in the behemoth's direction. Captivated by his insanity, both armies stared in open wonderment.

The beast took one look at him… and _roared_, its impossible maw gaping in its terrible rage.

**No-Man's-Land, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

"Please_ tell __me __you__'__re __not __going __to __try __and __fight __that__ thing,_" Arrika begged, sounding genuinely worried. "_I __only __just __found __a__ new __contractor__—__I__ can__'__t __lose __you __already! __It __would __be __too __cruel! __If __you __really __have __a __death __wish, __just __think __of __how __your __demise __will __inconvenience _my _life! __Have __you __no __heart?_"

"Oh relax," Link responded out loud as he urged Epona toward the emerging monster at full gallop. "I'll be fine… unless you think you'll have a problem taking this big sissy."

"_Of __course __not!_" Arrika was openly furious at the very suggestion. "I _am_ pristine_!__ Perfect! __It__'__s _you_ I__'__m__ worried__ about, __you__ fleshy __bag__ of __things-that-can-be-wounded. __That__ '__big __sissy__' __is __a__ hundred__ times __your __weight! __He __could __flick __you __and __break __all __the __bones __in __your __body!_"

"Oh please, this fat bastard couldn't lay a finger on me on his best day!" Link wasn't bragging, he was _telling_, and his confidence startled the maiden of the sword. "Besides, giant enemies are a blast! I won't have to hold back at all! In fact… _Hell!_ Let's just go full tilt for the whole battle, how's that sound?"

"_Um__…_" Arrika didn't have a chance to object further before Link dismounted from Epona without slowing in the least, doing somersaults until he'd shed enough speed to spring right up onto his feet in the same tumbling motion. He shook his head clear of a moment's dizziness, and then immediately cocked his arm at the beast, displaying a prominent 'up yours.' When it regarded him with surprise, he proceeded to bite his thumb, and then flip it the bird, coving quite a range of cultural preferences. "_Right, __Link, __let__'__s __taunt __the __giant __monster.__ That__'__ll __go __over__ well_."

"Haven't you realized who you shanghaied yet?" Link asked, a deadly calm settling over his body as the beast roared with a mouth large enough to swallow ten of him simultaneously. "If you haven't, you're about to find out."

**The Battle of White Plains Red**

The two armies looked on in wonderment as the non-descript warrior in his Orlouge blues stood up to the squat behemoth of root-encrusted brown dirt. The monster drew back one hand to swat him into a shattered puddle of gore, and let loose with a blow that would have toppled a castle wall. The blow hit the ground and the world shook, the trolls erupting into cheers and the humans sighing out a pained groan of horror. Both sides were utterly premature.

Having back flipped away amid the spray of debris, the warrior now dashed right up the monster's long arm like it was a conveniently placed ramp. It moved to claw him off of its back, but missed completely as he danced and rolled along its shifting, uneven torso. He'd mounted it the next instant, and a sword flashed out of his tabard, shedding leather and canvas bindings in tattered shreds, and sliced a gash out of the solid earth of its body as easily as you please. The blow seemed to have no effect, but he replicated it on the other side, giving it two deep clips around each 'shoulder.' It shook violently, attempting to throw him off, but he just stabbed that petite sword deep into its torso and clung.

Active again, he dogged another swat and started jamming one black sphere after another into the earthy gashes he'd already sliced wide open. Finally, he rolled away from a wild swing that would have beheaded him, dug the sword into its 'chest' and jumped down its side, dragging the buried blade with him and opening up a horrific laceration. As he fell, he quickly jabbed yet more spheres into the widening wound, and by the time he flipped backward onto the ground, the first ones back up on the shoulders went off.

Buried deep into the impossible wounds opened by that sword, the explosives ripped the earthy body to shreds. Both arms went flying away, and crumbled to dust the moment they were separated from the body. The monster bellowed with its impossible mouth, but didn't have a chance to begin forming new arms before the explosives buried deep, deep inside its torso went off as one. This time the monster was literally blown in two, the half where its big eye scrambled staying solid as the other half crumbled away. It was limbless and dissolute now, not even able to properly form its mouth, and now that warrior scrambled up to make a wide horizontal slash and chop open the mass that connected it to the living soil. A bundle of three bombs shoved into that hole and the man was away again, just in time to elude an explosion that tossed the last bit of monster, including the eye-dot, high, high up into the air.

Before it reached the zenith of its arc, the man was already beneath its landing point, and he stood ready for its fall with his sword loose in his hand. It came in at him like a catapult boulder and his sword struck three times so quickly that it was barely a flash of light. The earthy boulder was pared down by half twice, and then the final piece, the one containing the trapped dot of the eye, was batted up into the air again. The swordsman crouched, shifted his grip, and then stabbed upward to meet it with a thrust that used his entire body. The eye-dot was pierced through with a shot that, by the demonstrated ability of the obviously magical sword, would quite possibly have split a two-ton hunk of solid iron right in half.

The battlefield was utter silence for a moment, and then the impaled bit of earth vented a ghastly shrieking noise and quickly evaporated into a cloud of hideous black smoke. The sword was left clean and pristine, and the swordsman utterly unscathed. A deathly silence pervaded the battlefield, even the war drums having momentarily stopped, and one could hear the famous winds rustling through the waist-high grasses.

Then the humans finally understood what they'd just witnessed, and a cheer like none other rose from the gathered formations of infantry, even as an answering groan echoed from the suddenly disheartened troll lines. Entire blocks of troll spearmen and axemen, units sixty strong each, all started to edge away from the demon-slaying swordsman. Some level-headed commander saw the crease open up right down the middle of the enemy's formation, and overcame the cheering with the sound of the horn call that would signal the shock troopers to charge. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the most elite of all commoner warriors in the Ghentese army burst forth from the stationary halberdiers at the very middle of the human formation and sprinted through the no-man's-land directly at that crease.

The battle resumed in a sudden bloom of chaos as the trolls reacted, only too late attempting to close their ranks again. The massively armed and armored swordsmen spilled around the motionless warrior that had so neatly destroyed that abomination, giving him a respectable berth as they carved bloody destruction into the disorganized core of the troll army. The trolls tried to scatter away and regroup, but their sheer numbers made this disastrous, and they pressed into one another in a chaotic frenzy that paralyzed their ability to respond.

Horns sounded all across the line, and the heavily-equipped pike and halberd formations advanced at a steady march, weapons leveled in a nigh-impenetrable wall of death. They were soon hedging in the trolls, and when the press became too much for the trolls to retreat, they began to chop into the huge mass of them like a reaper blade taking nibbling bites out of a great hedge of hay. The turmoil was complete, and it was just in time for the heavy cavalry to shed their opposite numbers in the side-field skirmishes and simultaneously approach each of the high flanks of the gigantic troll infantry block.

The battle was going wonderfully for the humans, but the trolls were fighting back to deadly effect, and their sheer numbers meant that they could absorb those casualties and still be effective. Despite the setbacks, the trolls were vicious and determined, and even when the double heavy-cavalry charge pinched them from both flanks and utterly eradicated several formations, one after another, they continued to stand their ground and fight. Somewhere back behind their infantry block, the war drums were beating again.

**No-Man's-Land, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

"_I__… __uh__…_" Arrika, for the first time since Link had taken her on board, was utterly speechless. Link slowly lowered his blade after watching the demon dissolve into black mist, and as usual after destroying an enormous opponent, he felt himself growing that much stronger. Horns were blasting all around him and great tides of armored men ran past, but he held his ground for the time being.

"I believe the expression you're looking for is something along the lines of, 'Good work Link!' Or maybe, 'Hey, Link, I guess I was wrong to doubt your awesome skills!' I'd even go for a simple, 'I couldn't have done it better myself!'"

"_You__'__re __some __kind __of __freak, __aren__'__t __ya_?" Arrika speculated, sounding annoyed.

"_I__ mean, __its __one __thing __to __hear __you __whine __about __it, __but __that __was _ridiculous_! __That__'__s __not __even __a __blademaster__'__s __power, __that__'__s __some __kind __of __entirely __different __order __of __ability! __I __knew __you __were __good __but__… __I__mean__… __wow!__ Only __sword __maidens __and__ divos __should __be__ able __to fight __like __that!_"

"You really know how to kill a buzz, don't you?" Link sighed, instantly crestfallen. If even the magical, immortal entity that inhabited his sword was freaked out by him, what the hell kind of hope did he have with the rest of the world? It was a thoroughly upsetting development, and the mindless inner voice that was barking and bellowing for him to charge into combat was, for the moment, no match at all for his quiet distress. "I suppose you're seeing me in a whole new light now that you realize I'm an inhuman monster, right?"

"_Are__ you __kidding_?" Arrika sounded suddenly exuberant, "_You__ say__ '__inhuman__' __like__ it__'__s __a __bad __thing! __In __all __my __years __of __dealing __with __mere __mortals, __I__'__ve __never __seen __anything __so _incredible_! __I__ mean, __what __are __you __waiting __for?__ Go__ out __there __and __show __me __what __you __can _really _do!_"

"But… its trolls. I thought you were tired of trolls?" Link, caught off guard by this response, although he certainly shouldn't have been, grasped at straws to get a better handle the reversal he'd just witnessed.

"_Honey,__ for __more __of _that_, __I__'__d __put __up __with__ the __taste __of _dogs," Arrika assured him. "_So __go __ahead, __make __me __a__ happy __girl. __I__ want __to__ set __a __new __record __today __for __most __shit-kicked-in __during __one __battle._"

"Uh… I guess I should have known you'd have no problem with this," Link shook his head, wondering at his own sensitivity. He'd been ready for her to reject him like so many others—like he already expected to be dropped by most of his new, local acquaintances as soon as they witnessed the horror of superhuman ability he had fully expected to find himself perpetrating here all along. In a way, it was intensely comforting that he would at least have _one_ friend he could never scare away by becoming too monstrously deadly for others to feel safe with him around.

"_Have__ a __problem_…?" Arrika sounded astonished by the entire concept of ostracizing someone for being unbelievably dangerous and far more capable than should be humanly possible. "_Link,__I __need __to __assure __you, __I__'__m __not __bothered __by __this. __If __anything, __I __think__ I__'__m_ in love."

"What?" Link started, because the last two words, besides being startling in and of themselves, had also seemed to come into his right ear rather than inside his brain. He glanced that way, and there was Arrika, her cute, aquiline features nuzzled into his shoulder as her hands wrapped around his chest from behind. The rest of her childish, insubstantial body in her skin-tight, black fencing gown sort of floated behind him, her short legs not touching the ground. "Whoa, you're manifesting again!"

"I am?" Arrika opened her eyes, and was instantly able to see herself, "I am!" She squealed in girlish glee, phasing right through him to seat herself perched on his shoulder like he was carrying her in parade. She had eyes only for her own unexpectedly visible self, and her sudden enthusiasm was infectious. "I can't believe this! I wasn't expecting to be this developed again for at least another year or two after relocating my focus!"

"Huh," Link looked at her sword, which was still pristine, despite the soil he'd cloven to rip that beast apart. "It must have been that monster. Slaying giants and dragons has a tendency to strengthen you on a fundamental level, in my experience."

"I'll admit, I might have soaked up some of its life-force," Arrika nodded, "But why doesn't it surprise me that you've been strengthening yourself in such a reckless way?"

"Reckless…? The monsters are _there_, Arrika!" Link complained, as he kicked a shield dropped by one of the Ghentese swordsmen and then caught it when it flipped into the air. "They _need_ to be slain! _Someone__'__s_ got to do it."

"Yes, Link," Arrika sighed, rolling her eyes from her weightless position on his shoulder, "but most people have something called _sanity_. They tend to use siege weapons to kill things that size."

"Whatever you say," he sighed back at her, already charging along the body-strewn path that would take him to the center of the melee. His heart sang with joy, at once because he was no longer restraining that animal urge to dance with death, and because he'd found the very first girl ever who he could actually talk about his interests with. "Anyway, did I tell you that you cut quite gorgeously?"

"Oh? _Flatterer_!" she complained with a smirk, "but you haven't seen anything yet! That was _dirt_. This blade wasn't forged to cut dirt, it was forged to cut flesh and metal. Give it a try and you'll see what I mean."

**The Battle of White Plains Red**

The battle languished in bloody, wavering stalemate for roughly fifteen minutes of furious fighting. The Cavalry charge bogged down, and when the knights tried to withdrawal to set up another crushing lance-drive, they found themselves penned in by the returning veraq cavalry. The heavy swordsmen were caught up against the last of the middle units in the formation, having scattered everything else in their way. They'd nearly split the troll army into two, and along with the knights, nearly into four separate parts, with the leading ends pinned against polearm infantry. Still, humans were dying almost as quickly as trolls now that the fighting had locked up, and they just didn't have the numbers to die man-for-man with their enemies.

Things were looking decidedly grim when a sudden burst of activity wakened their wavering resolve. Somehow, at the tip of the trapped swordsman formation, the heavy axe-infantry trolls were being forced wide open, and many were even fleeing outright. It was incomprehensible, until one noticed the center of the disturbance. The man in Orlouge colors was back, that fiendish blade in hand once more, and he was showing the shock troopers how it was done in a demonstration that nothing human could hope to emulate.

He moved like a breath of air. That is to say, nothing could touch him as he slipped into the center of one tight formation after another and set about carving swathes of hot troll blood with almost gentle-looking sweeps of his sword. The weapon carved through metal and flesh like they were mist, meeting next to no resistance no matter how much obstacle it was presented with. Every now and then, a skilled or lucky troll would catch the blade at just the correct angle to stop it without losing his own weapon, only for the blade itself to jerk suddenly and at impossible lengths to carry on past the defenses. It was as if the sword was on its own seeking out the gaps in one or another troll's guard. Still, the vast majority of the time the blade struck before the troll ever knew he was in danger, bisected him along some horrific angle, and then the warrior was on again to the next cluster of foes. That man cleared out one block of resistance after another, the spraying gore of the uncommonly grievous wounds he caused drenching him in blood, and eventually the trolls just fled rather than face him.

The human assault gathered around him like water following the path of least resistance across a grooved surface, and he became the nail that finally split the trolls in two. At the same time, the light cavalry arrived to distract the veraq riders, allowing the knights to pull out of the deadly melee and arrange to hit the troll flanks yet again with their overpowering charge. The situation flipped back into human control, and yet, the man who had made it all possible was suddenly nowhere to be found.

**Beyond the Troll Encampments, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

"She's this way," Link said, following the sound of the drums. It had quickly become apparent to him that he could loiter about massacring troll infantry all day, or he could put his skills to an actual test and take a crack at the current wielder of the Triforce of Power. The choice had been simple enough.

"Oh… I was having such a good time…" Arrika whined in mock petulance as she floated a little ahead of him and turned to give him a girlish pout. She then vanished, de-manifesting to snap back to her current home in Link's soul. "_Do__ what __you __have __to. __Ah__… __and __recall__… __now__ that __I__'__ve __been __a __little __juiced __up, __I__'__m __feeling __quite __dandy __enough __to __try __and __generate __the __illusionary __sword_."

"Illus—oh!" Link's eyes lit, and he suddenly felt quite like the child in the toyshop. That fantastic sword skill that cut things without ever touching them… was suddenly all his! Or rather, it was still all hers, but she was sharing. He made a note to at least try to learn to do that without her help, just to see if it was possible, and then that one-track mind of his began shuffling through the combat stratagems that had first emerged the very first time he'd seen her use that power. "How do I activate it?"

"_Just __imagine __when __you __want __to __cast __one, __and__ then__ draw __the __line __with __the __sword. __I__'__ll __do __the __rest._"

"Got it. And here we are," Link was well behind the battlefield now, and spotted the staging area where the huge barrel-drums stood, thumping out their varying beat. Dozens of witch doctors were there dancing in a circle around a totem of grisly, dismembered human and troll remains. The ritual was generating some terrible amount of power, so much that as he approached, Link felt his skin start to crawl. He scanned the masked tribal sorcerers as he closed in, searching for likely suspects, and then spotted the queen balancing on top of the intestine-strewn totem pole with one foot, dancing in place as she channeled and focused the great spell they were weaving.

Just as he reached within range to attack, the tall grasses around him erupted with motion, and he had to fling himself back and away before the ambushing bodyguard of elite trolls in their shining breastplates could mousetrap him. He managed to avoid being clipped with a viciously barbed spear that had come rocketing directly for his jugular, but he just couldn't backpedal fast enough to keep them from closing a sudden circle around him. It probably would have been possible to dispatch them one at a time, especially considering Arrika's demonstrated disdain for armor of any quality, but that spell looked suspiciously close to completion. He hadn't time nor patience to do this the hard way.

The circle of expertly-held swords, spears, and axes tightened slightly more each second. Their weapons moved and weaved in a kind of dance clearly meant to distract him from where the real blow would come, and surrounded as he was, there was always a good deal of the opponents he couldn't keep his eyes on.

"Watch this," he bragged to Arrika, simultaneously imagining that delightful phenomenon that she had used against him in the tomb. He then shouted a bellow of effort and flung himself into a spin-attack from a standing start. There was the usual burst of disorientation, and none of the shocking impact of sword with flesh that he was accustomed to when executing that maneuver.

He came to a stop, and the world seemed to pause for an instant. The next second, the entire circle of life-long warriors, battle hardened and armed to teeth, exploded into an expanding cloud of hot gushing red. Very few of the hardy souls had actually been slain, but every last one had been bisected, and now lay twitching in two parts, paralyzed by shock and rapidly bleeding to death. Still drenched in rivulets of gore—tacky, clotted blood from earlier mixing with this fresh coat—Link resumed his flat-out sprint toward the ritual site.

The sorcerers were all far too absorbed in their ritual to pay Link any mind, even when he stopped at the edge of their circle and buried Arrika's sword point-first in the sand. He drew an arrow from the quiver of those prepared with bombs, stretched it over his neglected bow, and aimed it right at the totem pole. There was an indistinct thrill of danger, and he distantly heard Arrika wonder aloud what he was doing, but the overpowering sense of threat that was coming from that spell spurred him onward without a thought. In a pristine shot, he launched the bomb directly at the totem pole. Its explosion shattered the wooden edifice and knocked the sorceress queen flying, utterly destroying the spell, which backfired _magnificently_.

A second explosion followed the one he caused in instant succession, and Link felt his world clap into a black void, his body buffeted backward by the terrible rending force of thirty two troll sorcerers going off like they were made of their weight in blasting power. When he snapped back to consciousness, what of his body he _could_ feel throbbed like one big bruise, and he was utterly unaware of his surroundings. His vision was blurred and his ears were ringing, and vertigo assailed him as he reflexively tried and instantly failed to sit up.

"_Link! __You __great __fool!_" Arrika's concerned voice was the only sound he was aware of as he struggled in vain to get some sense of orientation. "_What __possessed __you __to __do __something __so __idiotic?_" She manifested, rising out of his body like his own ghost was leaving him, and then turned around to look down at him in the terrified anger of extreme care. He saw her lips moving through a wobbling world, but he couldn't make out what she was saying now that she wasn't within him. Doubtless she was berating his recklessness again, probably going on about how he couldn't go around risking the body she needed as transportation and all that.

Link, for his part, found his attention focused not on her preciously concerned expression, but on the brilliant flare of fire in the sky behind her. That flare grew closer, larger, and then he felt a thrill, even through all his numb agony. It was the thrill he'd come to associate with his own impending death, and that was when he realized what that blazing flame was. Summoning all the strength he could muster, Link managed to roll over a few times, phasing right through the insubstantial Arrika as he desperately tried to dodge.

Three agonizing rotations later, Link was face down when the ground bucked like a spring mattress and bounced him bodily into the air, a simultaneous blast of force from where he'd just been lying sending him for a new tumble. The buffeting force on his already abused body nearly dragged him back into unconsciousness, but he fought back the darkness edging in on his vision and looked toward where he'd nearly been obliterated.

There now was the troll queen, blazing fire enveloping her crest of hair and dripping from her hands and all the skin of her upper body. Her tongue lolled out, the Triforce piece throbbing a glorious golden color as she panted for air, terrible wounds rent across her flesh in ruinous patterns. Her eyes were like two ugly blades poised at his throat as she dragged herself toward him, intent on settling things. She had no words for him, no taunts or threats to speak of, only the murderous intent written in every nuance of her expression and the air of awful power that swirled around her.

Link tried to move, but he could not force his body to budge. Whatever damage the explosion had caused him, only his unnatural hardiness had kept him alive and in once piece, and there'd been no possibility of him being better off than that, considering that he should have been blown to bits. He was conscious and fairly lucid, but it was as though his mind was disconnected from his body. He had no more chance of fighting off this enemy than he did of suddenly standing up and completing a triathlon.

The troll queen closed in and stood over him, and Link looked up, giving her every ounce of defiance he could muster. She raised her hands, and in them grew a great bubbling sphere of oozing liquid flame. The fire blazed and roared above her head, and then suddenly snuffed out.

Link watched in amazement as everything above shoulder height on the naked and gore-encrusted female troll shifted and tumbled away, severed along a perfect line. He glanced beyond her as the body tumbled over in turn, and there was Arrika, her sword in her hand. She seemed to vanish, and then she was standing above him, and she knelt by his side, placing the sword into his hand. She looked nearly dead with exhaustion, pale and drawn beyond her normal complexion, and she could spare no words for him as she touched his chest and began to sink headfirst into his body like she was diving down a well.

With the deadly threat gone, the sudden relief that flooded through him was nearly enough to loosen his grip on consciousness and send him spinning into the abyssal darkness. Still, something in him recognized that if he blacked out now, in this terribly exposed position, he would never wake up. As he struggled to hold on and prayed for his backup insurance plan to hurry up and kick in, the corpse of the troll queen began to glow. He blinked his stinging eyes, but refused to look away despite the acute agony that was stabbing into his skull. Thus, he was able to see when a tiny golden triangle, a mere inch on a side, rose out of the dead body and began to float in the air.

Astonished, Link realized that the Triforce of Power was free, and also _easily_ within arm's reach. Summoning a new effort, this one fueled by nothing short of everything he had left, Link gained control of his left hand and reached out to claim the cause of so much death, misery, and pain. Although he could not feel it, he could see the Triforce of Courage blazing in sympathy within his palm as he closed with its mate. He brushed one finger across its nearest point, and was undone.

As his body was wracked with a whole new plateau of pain and subsequently punted toward a nearby tree—one of the swamp's outermost colonists in the plains—Link saw a vision. Even with only that tiny touch, he was inflicted with some of the memories held so freshly in that divine artifact, and he knew something of what had happened at last.

He felt a warm sort of calm as he pirouetted limply in midair, and saw for himself the way the Triforce had attempted to return to the Golden Land after Gannondorf's demise, only to be driven out by the fact that its two counterbalances were still in the living world. It had been forced to find a vessel, an entity that best embodied Power in which it could persist in the mortal realm. While searching for its true home from some unknowable in-between dimension, the troll queen had spotted it and gobbled it up, a stroke of untarnished fortune for her as she traveled in spirit form on other magical business. Finding the vessel to be adequate, if hardly ideal, the Triforce had submitted.

Link… Link was _not_ a suitable vessel for Power. His eyes were burned by the sight of it shooting into the sky, and then blazing off to the east. This was his final revelation before he crashed into the tree and blacked out. His body clattered down its side and came to rest in a ditch formed by its roots, and the impact against the tree shook loose an old branch of thick leaves that landed on him with a thump and hid him completely from view. There was a groan and a sigh of relief.

Quite a bit late, but still in time, the contingency plan that his obsessive-compulsive nature had compelled him to arrange kicked in. The fairy he'd captured in the jar Jeanette had emptied released itself, fluttering around with its healing light to restore much of what had left Link helpless. It then vanished, returning to the place where those good spirits come from. Link slept on, his impromptu hiding place sheltering him from events as the day wore on without him.

**The Battle of White Plains Red**

As the battle ground in wavering stalemate, a sudden explosion echoed over all the battle's noises. With it came an end to the war drums, and immediately a change came over the troll forces. Where before they had been stalwart and unyielding, even in the face of one human advance after another, they suddenly became far more tractable. The knights set up for their eight or ninth consecutive flank-charge, and this time the trolls they aimed to eradicate fled rather than face down their crushing fury. Like a chain reaction of tumbling pins, those fleeing units unnerved the others, until one by one they began to break and dash away back toward the swamps.

Exhausted humans summoned a final effort as horns sounded all across the lines, digging deep and shouting their last battle cries as everyone not burdened by polearms broke into a charge and chased their foes off of the battlefield. The light cavalry, so terribly bloodied and so many fewer than at dawn, now had their chance for ultimate revenge, their tired horses still more than capable of chasing down and trampling the disorganized route of their enemies. The troll cavalry had fled the field the moment the drums stopped, and there was nothing to protect the fleeing man-eaters until they reached the refuge of their swamp.

All across the battlefield, men dropped where they stood, spilling weapons to the ground as they collapsed, often openly in tears. Thrice-exhausted infantry broke discipline to rest, or to celebrate, or most often to celebrate while resting, because to the last man they recognized what it was they'd accomplished here today. Other men stared around, an empty look haunting their eyes as they gazed at what was left. They had won, but the cost was unspeakable.

An army of ten thousand men now stood at less than six thousand. Of these, fully one fourth were the crossbow auxiliary units, who had been in a safe supporting role for nearly the whole battle. Another huge portion of the survivors were the noble knights, who, in their fine armor and mobile formations, never faced nearly the danger of the third category. The truly grievous damage had come to the common infantrymen, who had been reduced to a pathetic fraction of their original numbers. The polearm units, who had formed the wall against which the vast majority of the troll casualties had occurred, had lost roughly two-thirds of their number. Among the similarly commoner-manned light cavalry, who had worked so hard to shield their lords, the casualties had been around half. Of the one thousand elite swordsmen that had charged into the heart of the enemy to deliver the breaking blow, less than one hundred remained.

As what was left of the army worked at the grisly task of putting down the wounded trolls and collecting their own dead, the sun grew to zenith and then moved toward the western horizon. As it set, the thoroughly trampled grasses glowed with their famous white shine, and yet were so completely strewn with spilled blood that the glow became golden, and then deepened to a hard red. From that unforgettable sight, the battle itself would draw the name that history would immortalize it with, along with the legend of the miracle warrior who had appeared from nowhere and vanished again without a trace.

**Battlefield Aftermath, Southern White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

The night following the battle was one of subdued temperaments and solemn reflection. It was a great victory, but also the bloodiest battle on the continent since history had picked up again after the most recent dark ages. Among those inflicted by a painful ache of loss was one Sergeant Commander, whose heroic arrival with news of the coming attack had today been complemented with a truly spectacular performance as a battlefield leader. Manuel D'tannen didn't feel spectacular, however, and that night, when released from his duties to sleep, he barely stopped by the castle for five minutes to embrace his family before riding out onto the battlefield again.

In the dark, the terrible mess was all the more horrifying. The bodies had been collected to be burned or buried in the castle's grave-hill according to species, but there was still blood and shattered equipment everywhere you looked. Here and there a horse or veraq corpse had been left to rot, and a few buzzards and ravens still pecked at them, even as the scavenger dogs and other opportunistic sorts moved in with the darkness.

At length, he found what he was looking for in a lone mare wandering rather forlornly about the carnage. Her hoofs were stained with blood, doubtless from whatever people she'd had to 'discourage' from trying to claim her as loot, and Manuel brought his own steed abreast of her. She shied at first, and then recognized him and allowed her mane to be brushed by his fingers, still gnarled from the day's awful work.

"I was hoping you'd know where he was," Manuel said, feeling rather silly for talking to a horse, "but it looks like we're both in the same boat."

Just then, there was a barely audible tune carried in on the wind, and before he could even make it out properly, the horse had taken off into a hard gallop. He hurried to follow it, and soon they reached the edge of the swamp. Here then was visible the crater where that mysterious explosion had silenced the drums, the sparse trees of the swamp's edge crowding in like ghostly monoliths in the moonlit night. Manuel finally caught up to the mare, and found himself looking down at the very subject of his search.

Link looked awful. His face was blacked by a pattern of bruises that made him seem like the victim of a vicious beating, and the way he moved suggested that there were far more than those beneath his tattered armor. He sipped slowly from a bottle of crystal-blue potion and considered Manuel with an indifferent expression as he cantered up. He said nothing, no explanation or questions, he merely stared up at the solider and sipped again from his restorative draught.

"I was afraid we'd lost you," Manuel began, feeling the need to break the silence, but suddenly aware that he was utterly uncomfortable around this man. What he'd done on the battlefield today had been amazing, but also frightening in a way that even this hardened soldier couldn't quite ignore.

"Oh?" Link left it at that. He set aside the bottle into his equipment harness and started to catalog the bags on his horse, adding things from his belts here and there. He then carefully retrieved a sword Manuel hadn't noticed at first from where it stuck into the dirt beneath the tall grass and started to wrap it, first with canvas, then with leather bindings. Without another word, he slipped it over his back and then mounted his horse, coming suddenly face to face with the slightly older man that looked so much alike him.

"Are… are you leaving already?" Manuel asked. He cursed himself, for he could not quite keep the note of relief out of his tone. He didn't mean it at all, but he couldn't help but feel that way after what he'd witnessed.

"Yep," Link said. His monosyllabic bent was becoming aggravating to a man who was wracked with curiosities and other unspoken words.

"Where will you go from here?" He tried to wring some words he could give back to his wife and daughter lest they bemoan him for losing their new acquaintance without a trace. They… hadn't seen what he'd done. They'd want news.

"I think I'll take a trip north." He seemed to look into a different world for a moment. "Careda is supposed to have fine artisans. A friend of mine risked a lot and saved my life, and she deserves the finest gift money can buy." If there was more to that cryptic story, he obviously felt no need to share it.

"Please, wait!" Manuel begged, when Link had immediately turned his horse to leave. He was overcome by conscience, and couldn't let it end this way. "We owe you so much! There must be something we can do for you."

Link paused this time, looking back at Manuel with a slight hint of humor in his eyes. He nodded, and then seemed to think hard for a moment.

"First off, if the army points back toward Hyrule again, just turn it around. Is that fair?" He gave a small wink, perhaps finally hinting at who had sent him out here in the first place. Whoever that person was, he or she had saved all of their asses quite totally, and was owed more than could be easily measured.

"And what else?" It seemed odd that he'd made no posturing toward money or other reward, but then, Manuel had been under the impression that he was a mercenary from his short discussion with Miranda. Apparently that wasn't the case.

"And… that little girl of yours…" It took Manuel a moment to realize that Link was talking about Monica and not Jeanette. He was puzzled, because while she'd expressed her admiration for the man, her father had no inkling of the misadventure they'd shared. "Yeah… well, keep teaching her how to fight. If her interest holds up, point her toward Hyrule. Tell her we take women as career officers there."

"Wait!" Manuel said again, as Link started to ride away. He kicked his horse forward to follow, and the man looked back at him in annoyance. "Will we ever see you again? The ladies will kill me if I don't at least _ask_!" he tried to explain, when he got an odd look.

"I wouldn't rule it out, but really, pray that you don't!" Link shouted back at him. "If I come back around, it probably means something like THIS is afoot again!" He gave a wave to the ruins of the battlefield, and then his horse pulled away, and he melded into the dark of night.

Manuel reigned back his own horse and stared into the darkness. He found himself sad to see the enigmatic warrior leave, but mostly, he found himself relieved that such a monstrously deadly being wasn't going to be near any of the places he was pledged to defend anymore. He felt ashamed, but that was the entire truth.

**Three Days Later, Monseille, The Principality of Ghent**

Sebastein Orlouge and his personal bodyguard clattered up to the gates of the city and pulled to a stop at the checkpoint. He'd left halfway through the battle, during the most desperate moments, and now had arrived back here ahead of the news of their victory, but specifically, ahead of the young princess's confirmation by the army. For all he knew, they'd lost the battle, and any day now troll raiders would come riding up from the south to lay siege to the city. Still, that hardly mattered, because he was here now, where the last of his independent power lay. He still had some time, and he was certain he could think of some way to turn this situation around yet.

He and his guards came to the gate, where a man in heavy armor and the tabard colors of the Walls and Gates Division called for them to stop at the points of his men's pikes.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Duke complained, "I have urgent business! Don't you know who I am?"

"Of course, Your Grace," the man said. His voice was familiar, but his face was hidden by his full helm. "I must say, we're incredibly happy to see _you_! We thought we'd missed our chance when you left before we were ready!"

"What… what are you talking about?" Sebastein couldn't help but think that he knew that voice from somewhere, but it just wouldn't come to him.

"Oh, I think you know. By the way, I'm happy to tell you that my brother and his family are safe and in perfect health! As a matter of fact, so is Seargeant Commander D'tannen!"

For an instant, the Duke thought of that hard-eyed man who'd come up at the princess's side, but then he gagged in terrified memory as the matter he'd never settled here flashed back into his mind. Of course, he recognized the voice immediately afterward, but it was already too late.

"Terence!" he gasped, recognizing the traitor he'd blackmailed into betraying that great fool Martin D'tannen. By the time he managed to, the crossbowmen were already in position, and his guards tumbled out of their saddles with thick bolts jutting from multiple holes in their armor. He scrambled to turn his horse, but the man was already bringing his halberd around. There was an awful crash against his helm, and then he knew only blackness.

He woke slowly, an awful ache in his skull making every dot of light a new source of pain. Eventually, he was splashed with ice-cold water, and came back to consciousness in an utterly unpleasant rush.

"Rise and shine, My Lord," a familiar, incredibly deep voice recalled him to the moment, and there was the giant, Martin, eyeing him with cold murder in his stare. He tried to scream in outrage, to rail and toss out threats, but he discovered himself to be gagged. "No need to struggle, My Lord," the title was heavy with sarcasm in the giants rumbling bass, "We're going to take good care of you. You've been unconscious for a day and a half, and I'm pleased to tell you that news of a momentous victory has come up from the south. Ah… and in the same message, sealed orders pertaining to your fate, My Lord. I don't think we need to go into any details there, you understand the fate consigned to regicides right? After all, you tried so hard to hand _me_ exactly that punishment."

Martin didn't laugh, but his grim pleasure was glittering in his deadly gaze. The Duke slumped, weeping. He cried until the men came to carry him to the execution grounds, the charges of high treason for his flight from the battle carrying the same punishment as his true crime, which would never be commonly known. His tears flowed freely, the pathetic, worthless things so common to the fiend who knows remorse only in the face of his punishment. He was drawn and quartered at sundown.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

"And so, from this new intelligence, I believe we can consider the matter with Ghent closed and settled," Zelda finished her review of the morning reports with Ashei and Auru.

"Well, that's no small relief!" Ashei exclaimed, a great weight seeming to slough from her shoulders as she realized the punishing deadline for producing a competent armed force had just been loosened somewhat. "Now I can concentrate on kicking the arses of those goddess-forsaken moblins and lizardmen. Gotta wonder why they just up and pulled out that way though… I guess they might _really_ have just been practicing maneuvers."

"Whatever the case, we can rest assured that its one less thing to plan for. Anyway, you are both dismissed. Please have progress reports from you departments ready by the end of the week."

Both ministers stood and bowed, and Ashei left quickly, her mind at ease again after so long under subtle stress. Auru lingered a moment, however, eying the gaggle of pages and scribes within earshot.

"How fares Hyrule's prodigal son?" He asked cryptically. Zelda got the message, and shook her head that there was no new word. Signing in acknowledgment, the elderly scholar and statesman left the room.

Link was currently incommunicado. He'd left a written message on the whispering stone assuring her of his health and informing her of his intent to spend a little time in Careda. However, he wasn't responding to her attempts to contact him, and he hadn't spoken with her directly since the night before the battle. She was worried that she'd alienated him by siding with Jeanette in her plan rather than respecting his refusal, and although she rested easy with knowledge of his good health, this concern still bothered her.

In the meantime though, there was plenty else to deal with. The work of a hands-on monarch like she'd chosen to become was never complete. For instance, another of her reports held details of an agent in distress… because of the awful storms that were beginning to kick up in the southern oceans. It was barely blowing right now, but promised to be a record-breaking storm season, and the price of stock in shipyards was soaring as people prepared for the worst. Zelda allowed herself a brief flash of self-satisfaction and started to lay out tentative plans of how to use the money those freshly-confirmed investments would bring in.

**END BOOK ONE**

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

In case anyone wonders, this chapter represents another point where my primary historical reference was the video game Medival: Total War. Heck, this chapter might as well be a Total War fanfiction, or at least a crossover. Dubious accuracy aside, it made for a stirring action sequence.

I suppose the major error in this chapter (and the last few chapters) was that I changed Jeanette's age without realizing it. I suppose, overall, that my references to her age jumped around. I described her as having a prematurely alluring beauty for her age, and then later described her as having a body that did not match her mind's maturity. That got me all messed up on how old she actually was. I settled finally on a late-blooming fourteen, and there shouldn't be anything left to contradict that now, unless I missed something...

I removed a chapter-ending teaser about great evil awakening. It was stupid and pointless and needed to go. Talk about lame... what was I thinking?

**Book One Final Thoughts:**

There are times when I think I should have abandoned this project here. Up to this point, using the Legend of Zelda license to draw attention to my experiments in writing so as to garner feedback went extremely smoothly. Perhaps too smoothly. I got overconfident from the strong reader response and really started to dedicate myself to the story.

Around this point, a truly gifted internet troll by the name of IHateFanfiction (or something) flamed me in a truly petty, hurtful, and nonconstructive manner. I responded by sending him an e-mail where I pretended as though he had crushed my fragile ego by gradually altering the tone and content of the message from a strong rebuttal to a limp-wristed, mopey tirade about how these stories were just my desperate cry for the attention and adulation of internet strangers and how-dare-you-mock-that. He actually apologized, saying the message I'd sent was one of the saddest, most pathetic things he'd ever read. So I replied with 'Psyche' (or something to that effect) and proceeded to feel quite pleased with myself.

Later on, I would wonder how much of that counter-trolling was for effect and how much contained a grain of truth. Was I just pushing forward with this story beyond its utility as a self-training tool because I got high on reader's praise, or because I felt some misguided duty to supply strangers with free entertainment? These questions plagued me for the remainder of the time I spent working on this project.


	14. Interlude One

**The Golden Power**

**Interlude: Fate and The Chosen**

**Part 1: The Traveler, Mistress of Time, and the False Sages**

In the sand-swept vastness of the Gerudo Desert lies the forlorn shell of the Arbiter Grounds. More than half-buried in the dust of ages, it is forgotten by living men, and is home to only spirits having long overstayed their natural period in this world. Time, however, in its unforgiving way, forgets nothing and no one. Thus, she that holds time beholden to her will is able to locate such foci of knowledge, and includes them as stops on her journey to ultimate understanding. It was exactly this enigmatic traveler that prompted a blue halo of light to well up at the execution site that the Twilight Mirror once called home.

The halo flickered and rose upward, until in its center appeared a silhouette. As the female figure solidified, a mystical sound filled the air, music from a sort of flute that carried a kind of magic within it's tune that was long lost to men, and resided now only in the endless memory of the earth. At length, the woman came fully into existence, and the crystal blue instrument she caressed with her long fingers sighed into silence.

If anything could describe this being, it was that she was _old_. Although it was obvious that she was once gorgeous, those years were long behind her, and none could mistake her for anything but a matron of exceptional years. However, unlike many who reach such prodigious senility, time seemed to have been quite kind to her. Although wrinkles gathered at the edges of her eyes and mouth, her skin was still smooth and bore the flush of health. Although her hair was thinner than it had once been, its shining silver still blazed with vitality as it fell in loose waves down over her humble gray pilgrim's robe. She stood tall and without difficulty, and considered her surroundings with the knowing air of a person who has physically witnessed more than most can even dream to begin to consider to imagine. Her beauty now had been replaced with dignity, and she exhibited vast amounts of _that_ as she slipped the crystal instrument into an obviously custom-crafted pouch on her robe and stepped out of the halo, which faded behind her.

"I know you are here, 'Sages.' You will attend me before I become _cross_."

"Ah… traveler… you have arrived…" the ghostly wail came from nowhere, yet pervaded the execution site. Not so much as a twitch broke the Traveler's quiet reservation. "I was wondering when you would once again grace this land with your legendary presence. When was the last? Perhaps it was my master's, master's time? Or more generations still? No matter—you honor us _now_."

Six decrepit ghosts of wizened men, identical in their translucent manifestations, lined up on a high beam of the execution ground's shattered architecture. Though there was no real indication of which one spoke, the Traveler singled one out immediately.

"You have the 'smell' of a Lysander, spirit." She cocked her head ever so slightly. "So it was his line that spawned you simpering charlatans? I must admit, when I became aware that unworthy mages would one day claim the long-vacant titles of the Seven, I was instantly intrigued, and here I've arrived to discover that it was merely Lysander's arrogant brood putting on airs. I suppose you've met your fitting end, if your ghosts cling to this filthy place of death. How utterly boring."

"We are the sages," the ghost emphasized, apparently attempting to impress her with that fact, unable to process with its degraded undead consciousness that she understood exactly why that _wasn__'__t_ true better than he did, or even _could_, even while alive. "We have guarded Hyrule and punished her enemies since time immemorial. Why do you speak of us as charlatans?"

"Is that the way you saw it?" the Traveler asked, seeming annoyed by their innocent persistence. "You thought yourselves to be continuing a tradition of protection by taking titles not yours and sentencing people to an unnatural end with an artifact from the Genesis Times that you _did__ not__ even_ _understand_?"

"We… are the sages…" the ghost proclaimed. The Traveler shook her head, reminding herself of the futility of arguing with the restless dead. They had no minds _to_ change, so it was a wasted effort to bother trying. Still, it might be amusing to tease them with the truth, even now that it was several ages too late to help them understand.

"Tell me this, if truly you wish to reap of my wisdom, dead ones…" the Traveler began, enrapturing the simple entities by humoring them. They were limited to the tasks they were obsessed with in life—carrying out their judgments with vindictive tenacity, and hoarding knowledge. One was certainly easy enough to play off. "If you are the sages, what generation of chosen ones was it that discovered you and opened your conduits to the Goddesses?"

"?" The ghosts had no concept of how to process this. "We are the sages," they eventually repeated, falling back onto safe ground. "We _ascended_ to our ranks through our ability, dedication, and zeal for the task."

"Oh? And then who ascended to the rank of Light Sage? And who was the Forest Sage?" They did not answer, because they could not comprehend the question. "Or… did you forget that part of the legend when you decided to emulate those that rose in one time of crisis after another to repeat the cyclical War of the Three? Truly it is astonishing what facts are lost and what remains as time grinds on in its merciless way. I'm sure not _one_ of you fools has a clue about the places of power associated with the roles you so arrogantly 'ascended to.' Has the 'civilization' of this era even constructed temples upon them? Do the temples of the previous era remain? It has happened so many times… so _many_ times… and yet never exactly the same way. Maybe… maybe I should check… just for old time's sake."

Almost reluctantly, she withdrew a small hand mirror from a hidden pocket of her featureless robe. Its blue porcelain frame was chipped and worn down with age, just like the former beauty who held it, but in its decrepit form could be seen the remnants of an item once loved by some innocent child. Now, it reverberated with power, a magical artifact of momentous proportions disguised as a deteriorating trinket.

"I must be as great a fool as you all," she muttered to herself, despondent, her face showing much more of her age than it had when she was secure in her regular pursuits, "If I can let myself be pulled into it yet again. Always it is the same! It will _never_ be different, no matter how far I travel into time! There is no hope of escaping… because of course, it is _supposed_ to endure for all of eternity, isn't it? I know it and yet… I _still_ check… and this time shall be no different. I am weak, I suppose."

She had long since ceased addressing the mystified phantoms, and was debating and berating herself out loud in the manner of one long accustomed to utter solitude. Now, with a final, irresolute shake of her head, she drew up the mirror and gazed into it. Her eyes went unfocused, and a bitter smile soon stretched her worry lines smooth.

"It is after the battle, then? Every victory is inevitable… I suppose… what with the two united against the one, but it is a relief that the Princess and Hero came through relatively unscathed this time." An old, old pain forced a tick to flash across her face, but it was gone again in an instant. "It doesn't always work out that nicely." She let her eyes roll somewhat, a gruesome sight indeed, but it seemed to allow her to see even more. "But… where is the Third? Even defeated, there should be some trace of his taint. Something… something is amiss here."

Her curiosity roused higher than it had been in untold ages of mortal time, the Traveler turned to the lingering ghosts. Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion, for she now again noticed something that had bothered her the instant she spotted them.

"I suppose you fools couldn't possibly have mistaken the fact that the legends all speak of the _Seven_ Sages? Where is the last of your band of fakes?"

"Ah, it is a most forlorn tale," the spirits, ever eager to wheedle more knowledge from her, as long as that knowledge conformed to their preconceptions, were all too ready to reopen dialogue with a person whose predicted re-appearance was part of what held them tied to this realm. "In our dedication to the cause of justice, we took it upon ourselves to punish the Evil One when once again he emerged to threaten Hyrule. We were aware of the cycle, of the fact that his greed linked him so powerfully to The Golden Power that he could never be permanently slain, and so we conceived of a different solution. We attempted to banish him into the twilight realm, from whence he might never trouble the land again. Our dear brother was a casualty of that effort. A wasted casualty, alas, for the effort was in vain."

"And so you tried to contain the Evil One in darkness? _Idiocy_. He is history's greatest master of Dark Magic, only the Holy Light can _hope_ to harm him, even if it can never, ever slay him. So he returned and had to be contained by the Hero and Princess, as the Goddesses intended, and the wheel of fate churns onward. But where is he now?"

"The Chosen Ones slew him! Our own efforts made theirs possible, of course," the 'Sages' attempted to claim some sliver of credit in their arrogant way.

"Of course they 'slew' him, and now the shattered remnants should be hiding in some crack, healing, preparing to strike again someday. Yet, I cannot locate him. There must be a reason!"

"Honored Traveler, you must understand," the 'Sages' had truly hit the peak stride of their own self-satisfaction, "The Chosen Ones joined forces with the Twilight Princess. Together, they divined a way to _truly_ eradicate the Evil One. He is _gone_."

"NO!" the Traveler looked at once aghast and elated at such an impossible concept, "what you speak of is impossible! What's more, it is _meant_ to be impossible. If he truly dies, the entire cycle of fate is undone! I _demand_ you explain yourselves!"

"It is no trouble, Honored Traveler," the spirits ignored her distress as they continued haughtily with the tale of 'their' victory. "It is true that not even the Holy Light and the Sword that Repels Evil together can permanently expunge the Evil One, nested as he is in protective darkness. However, the Twilight Princess provided a third avenue, previously unexplored. She had the Hero forge the Master Sword in the power of the Light Spirits from the Twilight Realm. The Light-in-Darkness was imperceptible when they returned to our World of Light, but still struck true when the Hero smote the Evil One."

"Oh… Goddesses… no…" the Traveler looked ashen, her face seeming older and older with every second as she was staggered by this development. "Would… would that work? Oh but it _might_ _well_ work… which means… Power must be…"

She lifted her mirror again and held it at a slightly different angle. This time she looked directly into it, and the mirror responded by shifting between a number of different glows. She cycled between them until she was looking into a soft orange glow, where she finally stopped, her eyes gone wide with disbelief.

"And there it is… free of him at last." She let the mirror drop to her side, her eyes seeing nothing as she contemplated this inconceivable development. "If Power is free to find a perfect vessel, then this is _it_. The cycle is broken. _They_… will return…" She seemed bewildered, but the tears she slowly began to shed were somehow mixed with both joy and despair.

"Even knowing I had all of eternity to search, I don't think I really believed I would ever see this day. I must go back… I have to know _every_ _detail_ of how this came to be if I am to divine where next the newly freed avenues of fate might wander. Doubtless the Goddesses are already guiding this generation of Chosen Ones, preparing them for what they must face, for what the _entire __world_ must face, now that the inevitable can no longer be delayed. The jig is up… and the Divos are coming back. Heh…" she let out a bemused chuckle of borderline panic, "it will be the Genesis War all over again."

Apparently finished with her cryptic mutterings, the old woman stored away her mirror and once again drew out the smooth, oval flute of shining blue. She quickly managed a small tune, and was fading from existence in a sparkle of light the next moment.

**Part 2: The True Shadow Sage and the Last of the Sheikah**

It had been one week since Link left the village of Ordon, and quite predictably, life went on more or less as it always had. After all, there is not so much about a farming community that can be affected by the gain or loss of a single person. The salary that had once gone to Link had been given to another wrangler from the area, which was exactly the way they'd compensated for his absence before hand. All they'd done was make it a more permanent arrangement.

Because the world did not come to an end with his departure, Ilia could not help but feel somewhat betrayed. Her teenage girl's sense of justice was wounded that everyone else wasn't suffering as much as she was from this change, because that made it seem as though it were reasonable that he should be allowed to live his own life without regard for any of them. That he had left specifically to use his ability on their indirect behalf would never have occurred to her in those first days of inconsolable self-pity. The dream future she had been building for herself, the one that had secretly featured him as a chief element, was dashed and scattered, and no amount of reality was going to force her to just accept that fact without a fight.

Still, angst can only carry on so long, and in Ilia's case, there were plenty of distractions from her admittedly petty complaints. The night of their parting came back to her often, and haunted her dreams both in the night and at almost any inattentive moment of the day. She had begged him, pleaded with him, openly desired from him nothing more than the parting gift of witnessing his power unrestrained. Though it seemed little more than a dream, even by the next morning when she'd awoken from the swoon the experience had tossed her into, it left a lasting impression upon her that made moping impossible. As the week wore on, she felt more and more restless, and this came to a head when she finally _noticed_.

She was listlessly scrubbing at the mixed laundry of her house when she realized she would need more water. None of the children were around to send running with a bucket like she usually would have done, and so she stood and trudged over to the stream herself. She knelt on the shore and bent to dip her bucket, and found herself staring at her reflection for the first time all week.

One has to understand, there are no mirrors in a rural village like Ordon—and what glass is available rarely comes to hand. Illia had been so wrapped up in her gloom, she'd been avoiding her regular trips to the sacred spring, and had been bathing at night using a bucket and cloth. She hadn't seen the image of her own face even once, and of course, no one else could see what she could.

"Oh!" She gasped, quickly holding her hands to her face to rub at the sparkling golden tattoos that had no place being there. She was certain it was a trick reflection of the light, but even after scrubbing at both cheeks, the patterns were still there. She bobbed and wove, trying to see from different angles and to shake whatever was shining onto her, but she was finally forced to accept that there was something on her face that wasn't coming off. Eyes wide, she leaned even closer to the water to get a look at just what was there.

She quickly became frustrated, because the rippling surface would give her no clear view. Finally, she recovered her forgotten bucket and dipped it into the stream, then set it on the shore and waited impatiently for it to settle. At last she had a still reflector, and the moment she had a clear look, she instantly recognized the markings.

Possessing every bit of the baseline-levels of religion common to people whose entire education consisted of folk-tales and whatever profession they'd inherited, it was no trouble to spot the Triforce symbol for exactly what it was. She'd even seen some of the great artworks featuring it during her brief visits to Castle Town. Now that ancient, ultimately holy symbol was carved permanently into her face, the two images dominating all the space from her eyes to her chin. Ilia felt her heartbeat accelerate until it was painful, at which point she looked away and gasped desperately for breath. She tried to calm herself, but she found that her mind was in a whirl. All too suddenly, her parting moments with Link came crashing back to her.

A sudden bellowing from her father shocked her half to death, and she picked up the bucket and scurried away, as though she could put this all behind her for a while simply by skipping fast enough. For the rest of the day, she wandered through her chores as though she was dreaming, her hand idly coming to rest at her face again and again in every free moment. Her father couldn't help but notice how preoccupied she was, and he confronted her over dinner.

"Are you still hung up on Link?" He asked, about as delicate as an iron boot in the shin. "Only you've been mooning about all week, twice as bad today, and I'm worried about ya. I been wondering… what exactly happened the night before he left? I know you're a grown woman now and what you do is none of my business, but I'd like to know if there's any chance I have a grandchild on the way."

"_FATHER_!" Ilia shrieked, mortified. She blushed until she felt like she would burn up, and her gruff old man stood oblivious of the fact that he'd completely misinterpreted things. He actually went right ahead and belabored the point, as though her outrage wasn't enough.

"Now, no need to get all hissy-fit at me," he tried to calm her a little after she denied the accusation in no uncertain terms and proceeded to threaten to withhold her cooking from future meals—no small threat to a wizened widower like him. "I'm just trying to be certain you didn't foreswear yourself before I brought up the next thing I wanted ta talk about. The thing is girl, now that Link's not gonna be around, I've had to think about who'll be Mayor after me. Technically I can just hand the job off with the rest of the village's agreement, but it seems to me like it would be a good idea to provide for your future at the same time as the Village's."

"Oh no… father, who do you want me to marry this time?" Ilia sighed, because this was an old subject between them. Every year since she was fifteen, right around the anniversary of her mother's death, her father got to be just like this. It was early this year, but Link's departure and her own reaction doubtless brought it back to his attention. Because he'd had her so late in his own life, he constantly worried about how she would get by when he died. It could happen suddenly, after all, just like with her mother. For a while, it settled on Link, despite her avowed despise for him and the way he worked Epona, and the two of them had had fights where he argued Link's case and she played the offended maiden. Now it was liable to start up all over again.

"Well… you know… Will Stevens from the next village over is taking up as the new wrangler, and he's about as sturdy a young lad as any respectable girl could ask for."

"Will Stevens?" Ilia audibly gagged. "Father, you know my history with him—how could you even suggest it? The man is a brute! He gave me a black eye once!"

"Oh come on, you were both eight years old! Besides, as I remember it, someone caught up with him that same night and knocked half his baby teeth out. After an experience like that, we should be thankful he's even willing to move over here and pick up Link's slack."

"I'll never be thankful to that beast!" Ilia grumbled. Her father was unconcerned, as she was being no more vehement against this suitor now than she'd ever been with Link. Of course, this time she _meant_ it. She thought back to her last night with Link, and added, "Of course, even _beasts_ have better manners than Will Stevens."

"Now Ilia," her father used her name, and she suddenly knew he was serious, "I respect your right to choose for yourself, but you know I worry about you! I don't want my little girl to wind up a spinster living off of charity."

"_Uh_?" Ilia made an offended sound, instantly infuriated by the very suggestion that she might end up alone. In the way of all young people, the concept that her dreams might not work out was manifestly unacceptable. Right now, her heart was still set on Link, and despite the circumstances, she hadn't given up on him yet. This discussion more than anything else forced her to recognize for herself just how true this was. Her face softened from its confrontational expression as that fact sank in, and her father was left to wonder at the sudden seriousness she exhibited. "Father… do you believe in destiny?"

"Um…" the question came very much out of the blue, but he humored her and fielded it as best he could. "Well, I can't say for certain how much the Goddesses look in on each person's individual life, but I do believe that certain people are bound for great things. Link… Link was one of them. Rusl too has that sort of air about him, the blasted rogue that he is. I was certain that your mother was my destiny, but that could just have been the love."

"Aww, _father_," Ilia cringed against her father's sappiness, but it was still cute. Of course, he hadn't quite answered her question, but she didn't want to press the matter just now. There was a chance the mark on her face was meant to be a mark of her destiny, and in her hopeful state, it seemed all too possible that Link had managed to rub some of his off on her. If that was true, there was a chance that they were yet meant to be together.

The rest of the night passed in relative calm. That night, she checked her face in her wash water by candle light, and there were the marks, still bright and obvious on her cheeks. Again she tried to rub them off like lingering face-paint from a fair, and despite all the brooding she'd done during the day, it seemed that she might wake up from a dream at any moment. Instead, she found herself lying down to sleep in her loft, and soon into dreams.

Ilia had long been subject to nightmares. No normal person who'd been through an ordeal like hers could avoid such miserable scars, and though she'd recovered with the energy of youth and the support of her loving family, her nights were still plagued from time to time. However, the dream she had that night was slightly different.

The scene was a replay of the nightmare chase, the long ordeal that had at last stranded her in the foothills beyond the northern Bridge of Eldrin. The nightmare played out in the normal style, with filthy, terrifying bulblins screaming threats in their filthy language or goading her about by the point of a scimitar. Exactly as in the past, her memory of that episode was incomplete, and the next part she recalled was finding herself in the presence of that woman, the shrunken, grandmotherly crone who had rescued her in a manner she'd never fully explained.

In a flash, the dream focused on that obscure, brief acquaintance, and she found herself talking with that woman on a black plain devoid of any distractions. The woman's eyes were bright and wide, not burdened with the weight of her wrinkles as they had been in person, and though Ilia could not discern the specifics of what she said in the surreal dream, the message still filled her with the most curious mixture of apprehension and joy she'd ever experienced.

She found herself desperately wanting to go to the woman, who seemed to be beckoning to her. She looked down at the hand that gestured for her to follow, and she spotted something on the hand, a tattoo, that she hadn't noticed particularly at the time she'd known her, but that she certainly remembered. It was a single triangle, and just beside each of its flat edges a small circle was drawn. The symbol seemed significant, and yet she was already waking up, and her memory of the dream faded almost immediately.

That day, after her morning chores, Ilia was daydreaming about this and that aspect of what meaning all these portents and holy signs could possibly have. She sort of got the feeling that she was meant for something great, or at least greater than living and dying as a menial laborer in a nowhere village. Of course, though she wouldn't have admitted it, that could have just been her own wistful thinking and nothing more. At length, she found herself done collecting cucco eggs and began to stroll back toward her house, still deep in thought. She was so absorbed that she didn't even register Fado's sudden shout of warning, even after a lifetime of familiarity with its near-daily occurrence.

Mayor Bo was deep in conversation with Rusl on their house's porch, and when the shout came down, he barely even flinched. He started to shout curses and threats up the hill, and when he saw the running form of that vicious Old Blacktooth charging full-tilt out from the corrals, he actually let up a little. That ornery bastard ran off so often, they'd actually tied a special tag with their regional address on his horns so the other ranchers in the area would know who to return him to. Bo watched as he charged through the village, and didn't catch site of Ilia strolling dreamily along the central path until it was far, far too late.

"Ilia!" He had enough time to shout in horror before Old Blacktooth noticed a perfect target for his 24 hour rage-fest and bent his horns down to arch his charge in that direction. Ilia heard her father's terrified shout of warning, and then registered the sound of hooves that had been absent from the village proper since Link had left. By the time she turned and saw more than a ton of muscle and anger crashing in at her, it was far, far too late.

She froze, suddenly aware that she was about to die, and then something quite odd happened. The moment she released all inhibition in pure shock before her imminent death, her body started to move all on its own. Deceptively strong muscles born of a lifetime of farm work tightened like springs for half a second, then released in a terrific leap. She found herself a passenger in her own skin, astonished beyond comprehension as she traveled up and over the horns of Old Blacktooth's bucking head. One hand planted on his shaggy back, and her body jolted as she used the brief contact to spring the rest of the way over him. She twisted once in the air and landed in a crouch, and then almost as an afterthought she held out her hand, catching the basket full of eggs before it hit the ground.

Old Blacktooth stumbled off balance and went careening into the stream. Keening unpleasantly, he slowly swam back to shore, where he'd find himself quite through with the idea of charging the gates for a while. Ilia stood slowly out of her crouch, staring hat her own hands and legs like she'd never seen them before. Her own surprise was nothing compared to that of everyone in the village, who'd all looked in during the shouting and had witnessed every second of the near-tragedy.

When Ilia herself realized her stunned audience was there, she was mortified. There was no way to explain how she'd managed to do that, not even to herself, and she dreaded what the others must think of her after such an impossible display. She glanced around once, and everywhere she looked her extended family was looking at her like she was a stranger, or perhaps a strange animal, and she couldn't take it. She dashed back toward her house, spilling the eggs behind her in her haste, and clattered inside past her father and Rusl where they stared at her gape-jawed.

The moment she wasn't immediately in sight, the villagers snapped out of their wondering stares, and Bo hurried to follow his daughter inside. Everyone else quickly gathered together to discuss it, and while speculation ran rampant, no one could even imagine what had gotten into her.

Up on the cliff sides that framed the path to the corral, a small, hooded stranger considered the scene with a grim smile. In one wrinkled hand was the peg that usually holds the corral gate shut, proving that for once, this wasn't necessarily Fado's fault. In the other hand was a staff twice as tall as the stranger, all made up of composite hard wood and metals, and the stranger hobbled on this geriatrically before suddenly exploding into an acrobatic flip that carried the odd figure back into the deeper cover of the trees.

Ilia could not be roused to answer questions all day, the Mayor's attempts to talk her down from her loft met with silence and his one attempt to approach closer met with a shoe thrown with shockingly pinpoint accuracy. This persisted until well after dark, when a sudden and unexpected knock at their door brought him out of his perplexed brooding in the main room.

He opened the front door and looked down, because of course, Mayor Bo has to look down at everyone. This time however, he found himself aiming several feet too high, and he actually had to bend over a little to see all the way down to the tiny cloaked figure on his doorstep. Without a single word, the stranger waved the staff that was twice his height and hobbled a few steps forward.

"Just who do you think you are? What's a stranger like you doing in the village at this hour? Explain yourself!"

"Oh, don't mind me dearie!" the hood fell back to reveal the wrinkle-creased face of a truly ancient crone, "I believe an acquaintance of mine lives here. She's a gorgeous young girl—we met under the strangest circumstances, and now I find myself having to track her down all over again."

"I don't know who you think you are, grandmother, but—"

"Grandmother Impaz?" Ilia broke her silence suddenly, leaping down from the loft with a flip. After her neat landing, she paused to examine herself in new horror, having had no intention at all to come down that way, and then looked over to see the old woman from her dream considering her with a knowing look. "Old Lady… do you know what's happening to me? Only… I saw you in a dream… and now you're here… and… and…" Her distress was heartbreaking to her father, who stood aside as the crone made her way inside. She swung her staff and clipped the door, which slammed shut with shocking force.

"Oh my… it's really true, isn't it?" Impaz's words were soft and cryptic, moaning with the weight of her age as it pressed down on her. "I mean… I tested it… I saw it… but I couldn't be sure until I was here with you face to face again. I thought I'd finally finished my people's sad destiny when I delivered our treasure to the chosen one… I thought I could just age away and die as a forgotten old hag… but it seems we will _not_ be allowed to die out. To answer your question, my dear, I saw you in a dream as well. I've come to collect you for your training… successor to the Great One or not, you'll need to have the gaps filled if you want to be of any real use."

"Now what are you—" Bo started, but was cut off by Ilia.

"Great one…? How could you possibly know something like that?"

"Why… see for yourself, child," the woman suddenly moved faster than the eye could follow, and Ilia's hand sprang to life without her input, jolting up to catch the compact mirror that had been pelted toward her face at shattering speed. Her hand trembled as she turned her palm toward her face and spotted her image in the mirror. "If you'll notice, the proof is written all over your face."

There in the mirror, Ilia saw the Triforce on the right side of her face. Now, however, the left side was dominated by a triangle with a small circle on each side of it. She turned straining eyes back to the woman, whose hand was held up for view, the exact same symbol tattooed there in mundane ink.

"Welcome to the Sheikah Tribe… oh successor to the Great One."

**Power's Perfect Vessel**

The central kingdom, Hyrule, is flanked on the west by Ghent, on the northwest by Careda, on the north by the savage ice-forests of Gauhome and the vast, frozen kingdom of Cyrill, and on the south by the impenetrable, dark tropics of Tonza. To the east is the desert, known since time immemorial as the home of the Gerudo. Beyond the distant edge of the eastern desert, the lands well known to men of the west come to an end.

These places of rumor and legend begin with the mysterious Near East, a land of rolling steppes and hard-bitten hill-tribes. Of the land beyond even that, even less is known, although tales sometimes filter in by way of the mariners of Tonza or the somewhat crazy merchants that frequent the near east. These tales speak of the Far East, the land of the rising sun, where men with yellow skin and creased eyes eat their food with sticks.

Now… between the near east and the far east is a place that, for lack of a better term, shall be dubbed the Middle East. It is said that there is another desert here, perhaps not so grand as the one flanking Hyrule, but possessed of murderous sandstorms and fraught with other perils that compel men with sense to avoid it, and to skirt its edges during any travel there. Such is the dry, deadly fury of that arid place of decay that over the centuries, not one man has ever penetrated its depths. However, quite a few _women_ have.

In fact, an entire colony of women populate the vast oasis that occupies the center of the desert, women that have persisted viably for truly untold generations without the presence of more than a single man every 100 years. In these women is the knowledge of ancient times, knowledge lost to much of the west during the vast dark ages that once ruled the continent. Included in these heirlooms of bygone days are the high magical arts, the old tongues, and the secret history of the time before the Dark Age.

But here, in this secret, hidden place, there is not so much an idyllic peace as the sterile calm of ironclad discipline, along with the cold grind of institutional viciousness. While the rules of the place protect all, some find themselves favored more than others, and this is where we discover one young woman caught up in secret strife.

"She is going to kill me…" moaned the young woman, a lithe creature just blossoming into full womanhood at nineteen years of age. Her features were smooth and perfect, a mix of gentle curves and incredibly sharp angles that combined with her deep mocha skin tone to create a breathtaking image. Of course, in this place such beauty was entirely commonplace, and in fact, her features were extremely difficult to distinguish from those of any other woman going about her business in the busy main hall of the Arcane Arts building. Even their clothes were uniform, cropped tops and silken pantaloons to combat the desert heat showing off great masses of smooth, perfect skin.

Each woman was so much alike, in fact, that the best way to tell one from another was the particular tone and set of her makeup, which they wore without exclusion, almost like badges of rank. Those in glittering silver motif seemed to be the superiors to those in plain purple highlights, but the girl now fretting for her life was resplendent in sparkling gold, the mark of a High Adept. Such a rank at her age was staggering, and had much to do with her distress.

"Yes… that's quite possible." The person who listened to the girl pour out her anguish in such an open public place was quite the oddity in the tides of near-identical ladies. For one thing, this person looked a great deal like a young man, making him practically unique. He had blue-dyed hair clipped exceptionally short and wore a fully-covering suit of blue silks, his chest bound up in a black leather jerkin inscribed with intricate dragon designs. And yet… if he was a man, he was the most beautiful man one is likely to ever meet. What's more, he had exactly the same features as all the identical women, even if the effect of his dress and hairstyle, not to mention his lack of the ubiquitous makeup, made them seem quite different.

"That's possible? Is that all the advice you have for a condemned woman, Jamal?" The girl seemed to work her distress out onto the young man by berating him, but he hardly budged from his relaxed lean against the gorgeously inscribed walls, showing utter disdain for the huge effort that had gone into illuminating them with scenes of long-gone times.

"Well, you seem to have a good grip on the situation without my input," he complained, "what do you want me to say? You've officially completed your mastery of the High Arts. I congratulate you. Now you have to go report that much to the Old Lady. You and I both know she's going to be furious that you've shown her up again. I don't understand why you had to go and finish your mastery so many years before that jealous old biddy did!"

"I know, but what was I supposed to do? The teachers can tell when you hold back, you know that. You know what the punishment is for doing less than your best! Besides, why should it be my fault that I've excelled past anything she ever did?"

"That's not the point!" Now the boy looked up, real concern on his face at last. His gorgeous features creased with the same distress the woman's held. "So what if they punish you for holding back? Is the punishment _death_? Because that's what your accomplishment is pretty much _bound_ to have earned you. I mean, I thought you had this under control, Aziza! You know I can't stand the thought of losing you."

"Oh Jamal…" Aziza stepped forward and embraced her love, holding back tears only because to cry was an unforgivable taboo among the True Race of Gerudo. "What can we do? We can't run… we can't hide…"

"I know… I know…. There's just no way that Xanadu's Blademaster and High Adept can abdicate the city and not be hunted down as traitors. We could probably take a lot of our sisters with us, if they made a fight of it… but it wouldn't come out well at all."

"Yeah… I asked Nebure if she had any ideas, but she was no help at all—big surprise right? That little know-it-all… she told me that I should kill the Matriarch _first_."

"Kill the…" Jamal's eyes brightened with a flash of comprehension. "You know… that might not be such a bad idea. The Matriach of War and the Matriach of Culture both hate the old hag, they only tolerate her because she's too dangerous to assassinate. I'm sure they'd look the other way if you could take care of the Matriach of Magic for them."

"Jamal… are you as crazy as Nebure now? How am I supposed to challenge a woman that scares even the _king_? Just because I'm much better than she was at my age doesn't mean I'm any kind of match for her!"

"Don't be so modest, Aziza!" Jamal was once again enthusiastic, his powers as blade master granting him that unusually cavalier attitude toward violence as the solution to any dilemma. "You're the most powerful Sorceress I've ever even heard of! Even the Black King himself would be hard-pressed to match you! The Matriarch may have everyone scared—but she's getting _old_. She's leaning on her reputation to keep her position secure, but you and I both know she's slipping. Remember the solstice ritual? Or how about the new year's celebration? When was the last time you even saw her cast a spell?"

"Jamal, still your tongue!" Aziza was aghast at what her lover implied. For all of her sorcerous talent, her insatiable thirst to reach the pinnacle of magical achievement, and for all of her cultural heritage of violence, the bloody history of the Guerdo, Aziza was widely known for her even temperament and squeamishness. It was commonly whispered among their sisters about how odd it was for the bloodthirsty Blademaster and the almost laughably merciful High Adept to have formed such a close connection. Most put it down to the fact that each was the greatest prodigy of the War and Magic Caste respectively, and that such freaks of nature should naturally stick together. "There is no way that I am going to challenge the Matriarch of Magic."

"Well… then I suppose you'd better hope she's impressed with your groveling," Jamal's face fell again. "Anyway, it's almost time for your interview. I'll go with you and wait for you."

"Thank you," Aziza said with genuine feeling. The two of them held hands as they made their way to the Hall of Advanced Magic here in the Magic Annex. The fine sandstone architecture was sumptuously decorated with silks and artwork, but they didn't even seem to notice the grandeur surrounding them as they walked in silence, like the condemned. At length they arrived at their destination, and found that class was still in session.

The Advanced wing of the Annex was where Journeywomen trained to become Adepts, and this particular practice hall was where the Matriarch taught her lessons along with the pair of Adepts that served as her personal assistants. The Journeywomen all looked nervous and drawn, despite the fact that their average age was about twenty five, so powerful was the imperious presence of their mistress. The Matriarch herself was shrunken and bent with age, her hair gone gray and her lips crinkled around her toothless gums. Still, her resemblance to all the other sisters of their race was obvious. To denote her importance, she was painted with the golden makeup of the command rank, and held the elaborately engraved ceremonial scepter of the Matriarch Triumvirate.

"Enough, you whelps are dismissed," she snapped, as soon as she noticed Aziza at the entry archway. The Journeywomen almost deflated with relief, quickly collecting their spell scrolls and grimoires from the racks that lined the walls and filing out past the High Adept and her escort with eyes downcast. By now the rumor of Aziza's achievement had to be common knowledge, and with that went the inevitable reaction from the Matriarch. No one wanted to be in her shoes just then.

Parting from Jamal with an exchange of nervous glances, Aziza stepped out past the study desks and into the open, padded area where students attempted novel spells or sparred in mock-ups of magical duels. The Matriarch glared at her assistants, and the cowed women stepped back and into the corners without a complaint. They, too, were eager to be far away from the space between these two unnaturally powerful magic-users when the tension building in the air finally burst.

"So, my darling," the Matriarch began, using the falsely sweet tone and familiar address she'd reserved for Aziza since the day the younger sorceress had begun to show her impossible promise, "I heard you attempted the Final Mastery Exam the other day. I was intrigued to find out that you considered yourself ready for such an advanced test. Why, if you had passed it, your rank of mastery would be equal to my own!"

"Yes, Matriarch, but…" Aziza managed to get out, before she realized exactly what her vicious, cunning mentor had said. IF she'd passed it.

"It's a shame about how it went. To go through the entire test and then fail the final challenge. Your proctor told me all about it when I 'inquired' about it after the fact. I called you here to try and console you, you know. There's no need to be ashamed, you've already proven yourself to be an outstanding sorceress. Not everyone can be as good as the best. Isn't that right, my darling?"

In that moment, staring into the hag's toothless smile, Aziza realized exactly what had happened. This vindictive old bag had cut the 'problem' off before it could become a problem. Of course, even if she exploded into jealousy and reduced Aziza to ashes, she'd never be able to erase the fact that her record had been broken in her own lifetime. Instead, she'd put pressure on her examination proctor to cover up the results. Old Lady Neela was even more decrepit than the Matriarch, and wouldn't have argued a single thing the terrifying woman demanded.

Despite her outrage, this gave her an out. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and she'd walk away alive, if no longer the best sorceress in her people's recorded history. Unfortunately, this concept was more than she could handle.

"_No.__ Don__'__t __say __it. __Don__'__t __say __it. __Shut __up, __shut __up, __shut __up,_" Aziza railed against the urge bubbling in her soul, but in the end, she would honestly rather die than be known as less than the greatest and most powerful of all. Her anger at this deceitful snub was enough to overcome even her terror of the Matriarch, and she simply could not keep it bottled, despite her better judgment. "mmmmm… nnnn… NO! That's not right!"

"What?" the Matriarch was honestly shocked, but then flashed into blazing anger at this ungrateful response to her mercy. "You had best be sure of yourself, child."

"What I'm sure of is that I annihilated that exam! I scored perfectly on every challenge and corrected an error in the final problem that's gone unnoticed for hundreds of years!"

"Wretched child!" the Matriarch's toothless gums were bared—if she'd had teeth left it would have been a snarl. "If that's true, then prove it! You know the penalty for lying!"

"Yes, I do! Grandmother Neela gave me a written certificate of my achievement to hang on my mother's memorial. Do you know the penalty for lying, Matriarch? Or are you too senile even to formulate a reasonably convincing deception?"

"Enough! It's past time I cut you down to size, stripling!" Without another word, flames of sparkling purple blasted out of her shrunken body in a billowing sphere of power. Aziza was a bare second slower, her body blooming with silver lightning to surround her and dance in brilliant majesty. "Die!"

A blast of violet energy struck out from the sphere around the Matriarch and nailed Aziza perfectly. Her defense was pristine, but the old woman was wily with her years, and her attack split into five parts just before impact, circling around behind Aziza's defenses in a flash. She managed to stop four, but the fifth one caught her in the kidneys, and she was punted sideways onto the floor.

There was a sound of steel clearing leather and padding footsteps, and then the Matriarch struck again, Jamal caught up by his throat and shoulders in an invisible crushing grip. The grip lifted him into the air and then ground in on him until he was forced to drop his two scimitars.

"Pathetic! Foolish children, to rebel against your betters this way! Your naivety knows no bounds, does it? Did you truly imagine that you could hope to best me? What insanity compelled you to reject my generous correction of your naked hubris? Well, I'm going to be merciful a second time, just for you my little prodigy."

Aziza managed to crawl up to her knees, winded by the spell she'd only barely managed to survive. She wondered at what the Matriarch could mean, but only up to the point where she saw the mad gleam in the evil bitch's eyes. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, well, it seems the Blademaster here has just assaulted my person. There's only one penalty for that crime, you know. Ah… I understand this deviant freak is something special to you, yes? That's too bad, but maybe losing this one will teach you some respect for your elders!"

Jamal was drawn closer to her as she formed a sphere of destructive purple force in one hand and drew back to fling it. The instant she saw her love in danger, something inside the gentle young woman snapped. She was filled with a surge of _power_, power unlike any she'd ever known, but exactly like that she often dreamed of when she'd finished a fifteen hour day of incessant training. All of her drive and ambition coalesced in that single moment, and she burst with the force of it.

Jamal fell to the ground and quickly recovered his weapons, rolling up into a guard stance just in time to find out that he was utterly extraneous. The Matriarch only had eyes for Aziza, and Aziza was wrapped in a rainbow of luminous energy and wracked with the pain of it. His heart went out to his lover, but they all stood paralyzed by the brilliance rocketing out of her.

Aziza, meanwhile, was entranced in memories not her own. In compressed seconds, she was visited by a first-hand retelling of a legend known to every member of her small, isolated society. The legend was that of the Black King, trapped by fate and his own greed into an eternal, cyclical quest for the Golden Power. She witnessed, in those brief seconds, hundreds of lives lived across untold centuries, all following a striking theme of scheming violence thwarted by the chosen of the Golden Power's other two aspects. She saw all of that, and then the most recent one as well, when the Holy Sword tempered in Twilight had finally shattered the old, decaying bond between soul and Divine Power.

"No! Not _you_!" the Matriarch's bloodcurdling shriek snapped her out of the trance. "_NOT __YOU_! It should be _ME_. I deserve that Power! It's _MINE_! _MINE,__ MINE,__ MINE, __MINE, __MINE_!"

The matriarch struck with what must have been everything she had, launching a mass of violet fire that would have disintegrated Aziza and blown the back out of the building behind her… if it had struck. Aziza waved one hand rather idly, almost as an afterthought, and the flames vanished as if they'd never been conjured in the first place.

"_Bow __to __the __King, __hag_!" spoke a vicious voice that was not Aziza's. She brushed her palms gently against one another, almost as though she were wiping dust from her hands, and out from her fingertips came ten swirling beams of silver, gold, and violet. The beams knotted around one another until they formed a braid, dashing forward all the while, and struck through the Matriarch like a needle threading a bead. What was left of her when the flash of power faded into an after-image in dazzled eyes quickly disintegrated into fine ashes. Her scepter of office seemed to stand by itself for a moment before it clattered to the ground.

When the moment of crisis had passed, Aziza fell back to her knees again, eyes widened by horror. Jamal hesitated for only a moment before rushing to her side. He gathered her up in his own petite arms and held her as she shivered and quaked with shock.

"Are you alright? What the hell just happened?" Jamal tried to interrogate her, more to ensure that she'd recovered from that psychotic episode than anything else. If someone had told him the day before that Aziza would obliterate a living creature, even with the highest provocation, he would have challenged the churl to a duel to protest the absurd claim. Now he didn't know _what_ was going on. He wasn't the only one.

"What's going on in here?" a cadre of security guards rushed into the room, their weapons bristling, only to find the place surprisingly calm. Two adepts were cowering in the corners, while the Blademaster and High Adept were crumpled in the center of the room. The young guards, many of whom had studied under the even younger Blademaster, looked to him for guidance. Before he could mention anything, one of the Adepts recovered from her own shock.

"The High Adept just assassinated the Matriarch!" she shouted, not sounding as though she believed it herself. The guards were instantly on alert, their near-identical faces mirroring their mutual shock. Not knowing what else to do, they moved to quickly surround the Blademaster and High Adept, showing either their loyalty toward or their fear of the Matriarch of War. Ten times their number couldn't hope to challenge those two.

"Please Commander… come quietly," the guard Captain was genuinely begging. She was as brave as any of her sisters, but no one wanted to die against hopeless odds, wasting her life in vain.

"Aziza… can you hear me?" Jamal asked, making no move to implement his weapons on his quivering students.

"P… Power…" Aziza said. It was her own voice again, and that alone was enough to give Jamal enormous hope.

"Alright… we'll come quietly. I need to discuss this with what's left of the Triumvirate, and with the King."

**Later, The Gerudo Dormitory**

Aziza awoke to find herself in darkness. Still, her surroundings were intimately familiar—she was in the suite of rooms she shared with Jamal. It was quite large and very private, that honor owing to the fact that both of them had high rank, and the fact that none of their sisters were particularly eager to live nearby two such freaks. She sat up out of their double bed, and was almost immediately overcome by vertigo. Memories of what had happened came flooding back, and she sat in the dark silence as she tried to come to terms.

"_Power,_" she thought, and found herself staring at her left hand. That's what all the legends said, right? The Black King, lord of all thieves, stole into the sacred realm and tried to claim the omnipotent Golden Power to make his wishes a reality. His unbalanced soul split the Triforce, and he became trapped in a cycle of fate with the two others of legend. Just how many times the players had reprised their roles over these endless generations, it was impossible to know. She had no question what it was, but… how it had come to her, she could not begin to imagine. The source of that terrible influence that had so effortlessly used her hands to obliterate the Matriarch was equally without question, and yet also equally mysterious. Somehow, something of that legendary terror, Gannondorf, had come with the Triforce.

And yet, now there was no trace of him that she could detect. Just to be double-sure, she opened the heart of her magic and spilled it out into her hands in the most basic spell of all sorcery. Not only did this conjured light produce a brilliant illumination, but it allowed one to check one's own spiritual health. Aziza examined her soul-flare and pierced the silence with a sharp intake of breath.

Her flare was always the purest silver, all her life. Now, a silver core was enveloped in a thick layer of gold, the additional force magnifying the natural light by many, many times. But most disturbing of all, a mote of deepest violet-black lurked at the very core of her flare. That mote had no place being there by any convention she could place in all of her extensive knowledge of magic, and it's color was enough to make her break out in a cold sweat. The Matriarch's favorite boast was that her soul's flare matched the Black King's, the royal violet of the desert tribe.

Her nervous ruminations were shattered when a gentle knocking ended her solitude. She snuffed the light of her soul flare just in time to leave the room dark for the entering party. They brought a lamp with them, and by its light she could see Jamal leading the way, his gorgeous features smothered with relief to see her well. She almost called out to him, but stopped when she saw the others following him in.

The first was Nebure, her command-rank uniform identical to Aziza's making the two of them almost indistinguishable. Behind her came the tall, powerful form of the Matriarch of War, and now Aziza found herself suddenly terrified. It occurred to her that she'd murdered a member of the Triumvirate, second in command to the King, and no matter how accommodating the Matriarch of War was inclined to be, that kind of thing would never go unpunished.

"Oh calm down, you wonderful little girl!" The Matriarch shouted when she noticed Aziza's fearful expression. "You've removed a thorn that has been plaguing my side for nearly sixty years! I owe you more thanks than you can imagine!" Despite the warm greeting and the huge smile on the gigantic woman's face, Aziza couldn't quite calm down. The Matriarch of War was about seventy years old, but that didn't make her any less imposing. She was powerfully built, four inches taller than the average Geurdo and knotted everywhere with muscles. Her high rank entitled her to wear her gray hair as she pleased, and she braided hers into two looping arrays that branched outward like a headdress. "Still, I suppose it's not _all_ good news, so perhaps it is a little early for you to relax."

"I understand that my actions will have consequences," Aziza replied, utterly serious. The Matriarch lost much of her own smile at the same time, and crossed her arms.

"If you are going to be so resistant to my congratulations, I suppose I _will_ get straight to business. I've called you all here tonight to discuss the matter of your futures. I trust you are all aware of the many rumors that circulate about you three."

No one said anything. The three of them were collectively known as the junior triumvirate. It was more or less without question that they would each inherit leadership of the caste where they were currently excelling. Aziza, Jamal, and Nebure, the three freak children, future leaders of the Hidden Nation.

"We're not deaf, Matriarch, of course we know," Nebure was the first to answer, her voice as calm and assured, and arrogant, as it always seemed to be. The prodigy from the Cultural Caste was their counterpart in more ways than one—as excellent in her own ways as either of them, she was also the same rank. Being the same rank as Aziza, she looked like the sorceress' mirror image, and the effect was even greater than normal between Gerudo women. The fact was, she was the High Adept's twin sister. It was rare beyond description for a Geurdo to give birth to two children at once, rather an ironic twist to a society where everyone wound up looking nearly the same anyway. She went on with equanimity in her tone, "There are many of our sisters who refuse to let me see them during my duties as medicine woman—which is nothing to speak of the jealousy the older women in the Cultural Caste barely conceal. Half the adepts spread rumors behind my sister's back, and one can hardly count the number of times Jamal has had to 'throw down' with… his… subordinates when they get uppity about taking orders from one so young."

"I wouldn't mind, if they'd just learn their lessons and give it up." Jamal shook his head, his satin-soft skin almost glowing in the lamp light. "Still, it's like I'm fighting another challenge every week from the older women I didn't personally train. The rest at least know better."

"I've talked to them about that," the Matriarch explained, "but I've been making no progress at all. The three of you are simply too good to be true, and ours is a society where jealousy and insecurity most often leads to poisoned knives flashing in the night. This most recent incident has everyone convinced that Aziza, and by extension, the both of you as well, are attempting a power coup. You girls make the second-rank commanders nervous as hell. It's now gone beyond my control."

"What are you suggesting?" Aziza asked. She could tell when someone was beating around the bush, and the Matriarch was making no attempt to hide her distaste for the situation.

"Mayana handed me a proposal yesterday, seconded by Grandmother Neela, whose taken the Old Hag's position now. The general gist was that we take this opportunity to make the whole lot of you vanish, and end future problems now that our old problem has finally gone and done us the favor of dying."

There was silence. If Mayana, the Matriarch of Culutre, wanted them dead, and poor, senile Grandmother Neela had been suckered into signing off, there was little the Matriarch's gratitude could do to shield them. Indeed, this warning was likely the best she could manage, and she was risking much to defy the majority decision of her peers. There were three in the triumvirate specifically so that there could be no ties in the decision-making process. The former Matriarch of Magic had dominated the others through terror, and now the Matriarch of Culture was clearly trying to cement her dominance in the new power structure.

"What can we do?" Nebure asked, when she realized her sister and friend were too shocked to respond to this. "I assume you would not have bothered to warn us this way if there was no hope."

"Right, well, there's one way for you to survive this, but you're not going to like it."

"I defy you to describe a fate worse than death," Jamal quipped, looking angrier and angrier at the thought of being hunted down and obliterated by the adepts of the Magic Caste that he could never hope to match with his swordsmanship.

"You can escape into exile for a few years, give the situation a chance to cool down, and come back to stage an actual coup attempt when the general opinion of you has had a chance to fade to something less hostile. Or you can simply take your chances off in foreign lands. I hear there are places out east that are almost civilized."

"You mean… we're to live in the outside world?" of the three Aziza was by far the most shocked by the concept. Nebure's expression gave away nothing, and Jamal looked merely pensive. He had actual first-hand experience of the lands beyond the desert, having visited them often enough during raiding expeditions into the tribal nations that bordered the eastern and western edges of the desert.

"So… our options are either to stay and have our throats slit because we frighten the wrong people… or leave and spend our lives among barbarians and flea-ridden primitives?" Nebure shook her head, sighing as whatever plans for her future she'd nursed now crumbled and died. "Execution has never sounded so attractive…"

"Oh come, the outside world isn't all that bad," Jamal dismissed her negative attitude, obviously trying to buck his own spirits up as well. "They have… uh… they have… well, they have _men_ out there."

"Yes, well, your strange and deviant fascination with men has been half the reason we're so widely despised!" Nebure was quick to remind them. "I still don't understand how my _sister__'__s_ association with you rubbed off on me!"

"Oh? Well, your crummy attitude is the other half the reason our sisters are willing to see us dead! Would it hurt you to at least _try_ to be pleasant every now and again?"

"Enough you two!" Aziza ended the argument right there. "This isn't about placing blame, this is about surviving to see sunrise a few days from now! I don't know about you two, but I've very little tying me to this oasis, or at least, very little that isn't in this room with me." The statement was heartfelt, and the each of the bickering pair had the decency to look guilty for their lack of consideration. "The outside world may not be as glamorous as here at home, but imagine—with our advantages, we could run things out there! At least, it would be safe enough until we can come back and show our sisters what we're really made of in somewhat more favorable conditions."

No one said a word. That was perhaps the most sanguine thing the gentle young woman had ever said, and her two closest companions were wondering what had gotten into her. The Matriarch of War just smiled, seeing in the girl everything that would someday secure their people's prosperity for another generation.

"Very well then, this sounds like it is settled. Gather only what you can carry, I'll have a group of my most loyal warriors meet you by the stables and escort you out of the desert. You must leave before daybreak, I cannot delay your arrest any further than that. We'll be cutting it close as it is. I won't see you again, so good luck. Thanks again for dusting the hag for me, High Adept."

The Matriarch was gone in a swirl of the skirt that clung around her outfit, uniformly as sparse as anyone else's. When she was gone, Nebure and Jamal were left to stare at Aziza in continuing confusion.

"Are you sure about this?" Jamal asked. "We could make a pretty good attempt at a coup as it is, you know. The three of us together are quite worthy of the fear so many harbor."

"I really don't feel like making a mess of my home, even if it has turned its back on me," Aziza said. "Besides, now that I've mastered all the magic they can teach me here, its only in the outside world that I can become even greater. I think I even have an idea of where I'd like to travel."

The perfect mirror that was Nebure regarded her sister with guarded concern. Jamal merely shrugged, moving in to cuddle with the love he'd quite nearly lost. For the time being, at least, they were still safe, healthy, and together. Who could ask for more?

**The Golden Realm**

"What do you mean, 'the gate transfer spell isn't ready?'" Asked the first Divo, sounding quite cross. That entity had quite a bit of ominous fury and explosive violence cribbed behind its words, but the one it addressed paid little heed.

"Well, you know, it's a funny story," the second Divo said without concern, sounding actively bemused and relaxed, "it turns out Phase didn't believe your claim that you'd get the Triforce Seal broken. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense, you did _fail_ like… I don't even _know_ how many times. You can hardly blame Phase for that."

"_Oh __really_?" the first Divo sounded livid, even murderous, but the second one was utterly oblivious.

"Yeah, I mean, you've been trying for like, how many millennia now? Hell, I lost count ages ago. The point is, the gate spell isn't ready. It isn't even started yet. Ha! Phase didn't even _try_ to locate the components necessary for it!"

The first Divo made a horrifying gurgling noise of incomprehensible fury. The second Divo chuckled like the antics of Phase were just _precious_.

"Anyway, once I explained to Phase that _you_ finally _didn__'__t_ fail, then the old lazybones finally got to work. Word is, the gate won't be ready in less than a year, but probably will be finished in less than twenty. You know how that delicate crap goes."

"Ah…" the anger from the first Divo suddenly defused into a terrible, depressed sigh. "You know, Bubs, sometimes I wish it was possible for us to die, just so I could have the pleasure of murdering you in the slowest, most excruciating manner imaginable."

"Oh Charge, you _always_ say that!" the affection in 'Bubs's' voice was totally genuine.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

When I finished book one, I sat down and took a look at what I'd wrought, and I started to sweat pretty hard. The fact of the matter was, I'd foreshadowed left and right, completely without concern for my own ability to resolve and explain any potential conflicts I might be creating. I didn't watch the TV show Lost, but I imagine its something akin to what they got themselves into after a few seasons. Having more or less exhausted this story's potential as a method for learning more about writing and garnering feedback about various plot devices and character concepts, the time had come to start actually trying to resolve the plot I had constructed so carelessly. This chapter was step 1.

Time for a bit of honesty. Until I finished this chapter, I, personally, had no idea what the hell a Divo was going to be. It was just a placeholder word for 'big mean badguys' until I had time, at some later date, to figure out what that should be. Until I finished this chapter, I didn't know what the hell I'd done to Illia and Auru. I'd just had the Triforce do something to them because I figured that was a cool thing to happen, right? Finally, I'd never had any serious intention to try and work out the continuity conundrums inherent to the Legend of Zelda franchise until I got to the end of Book 1 and realized I needed to spice things up to maintain my own interest in the story. If only that had been enough to get the job done... oh well.


	15. A Caredan Detour

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 1: A Caredan Detour**

**The Borderlands of Romali, The Confederation of Careda  
**

Link urged his rather tired companion onward through the night, having decided that the bright, moonlit sky was far too inviting to waste with sleeping. Epona, being the trooper that she was, complained very little, but Link slowed their pace anyway. Now that the border outposts of Ghent were well behind them, there was no particular hurry, and so they clattered leisurely over the rolling hills of the valley that separated the wilds of Ghent from the wilds of Careda. More or less at ease, he simply kept his eyes open, looking for some overnight shelter on the scrubby, short-grassed foothills.

The long-eared young man was jerked from his silent reverie by a sudden vibration from his saddlebags, and immediately he was sent back into the same quandary he'd been dodging every night for two weeks. Princess Zelda obviously wanted to speak with him, and he wasn't really looking forward to it. It wasn't an emergency, since she didn't bypass the vibration and just start talking, and so the decision of whether or not to speak was his, just as it had been every night so far. Of course, he'd continually turned her down, what with the news he'd really rather not share with her.

The night was cool and calm, and silent besides the sound of Epona's hooves and some other odd animal sounds, and Link suddenly came to a decision. In a fluid motion, he pulled the whispering stone out of his saddlebag and bathed in its throbbing glow.

"Hey, Your Majesty, what's the word?" he said, after jiggling it in the way that signaled it was okay to talk. His heart was pounding, and he knew exactly why. It seemed an eternity before she answered.

"Link?" the single, rather shocked word notified Link immediately that his boss had not actually expected him to answer this time, either. "Thank goodness… do you have any idea how worried I was?" Zelda's tone immediately shifted from confusion to a passionate intensity, and Link sighed, already regretting the silent treatment he'd fobbed off on her. If anyone deserved better than that, it was her.

"Sorry," Link said, answering her grilling with a wave of soft contrition. "I've been a little out of sorts since the battle. I just wanted to get away from it all for a little while, and I figured this little side-job of my own would be the perfect opportunity. So… I've noticed you really wanted to talk, and here I am. What was it you wanted to talk about? Is there another crisis?"

"A crisis...? No, nothing like that." Zelda sounded awkward now, quite strange considering her normally unshakeable poise. "Really Link, do you think the only reason I'd want to talk to you is to send you off on some task or other? Things here are perfectly quiet, but I never really heard from you after the battle. I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay, at least, to hear it from you rather than in some scribbled note."

"Oh, yeah," Link bit his lip. "Listen, Zelda, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Link, is something wrong?"

"I'm sorry… because I'm not sure if I'll be able to help you out as often as we agreed before."

"What? Link, did something happen? Are you injured? What exactly is this all about?"

"No, please, are you kidding? It's nothing like that." Now that it was time to come clean, he found himself up against the same reluctance that had kept him silent for so long, except that he couldn't ignore the source of it anymore. The fact was, he didn't want to disappoint her, and the prospect of letting her down was killing him. "You see, the thing is, I think I've finally found something that I _want_, you know, what I want just for myself. I know I pledged to work towards Hyrule's brighter future, and now it's like I'm backing out—"

"Link!" Zelda interrupted him, and he could hear the smile she sported so many miles away, "It's okay Link. It's not like I imagined I'd have you all to myself until we were both in our dotterage. Besides, your service to Hyrule was never supposed to be a full-time assignment. However, if you would allow for my curiosity, what exactly has caused this sudden change? What have you found that arouses your interest so much that you would worry about neglecting Hyrule in the face of your newfound passion?"

Link's head spun as he processed that sentence. That she wasn't offended or outraged was immediately reassuring. At times he felt like he knew the woman intimately, that they were practically life-long intimates, and at other times he felt he'd barely known her for a handful of months, which of course was exactly the case. Where that weird familiarity came from, he'd love to find out, because it would have been great to predict her reaction and skip the part where he felt like crap for 'betraying' her trust.

"Well, since you've agreed to loosen my 'leash,' I suppose I could let you in on it. The truth is, I've gotten my hands on something of an artifact."

"The sword of the Ghentese 'Lady Hero,' yes? Did I mention how incredible it is that you managed to turn that up? I know it's silly of me considering how much of Hyrule's legendary treasure you managed to acquire. I suppose I'm still getting used to your propensity for turning up legendary artifacts. But what of it?"

"Well," Link smiled, "I've gotten wind that it's actually part of a _set_ of artifacts. Now, understand where I'm coming from here—this sword is the single most magical item I've held since I returned the Master Sword to its resting place. What I managed back in Ghent wouldn't have been nearly possible without it. I figure… well… I figure I would dearly love to get my hands on the whole set, and maybe see what I can accomplish then."

"A set? I suppose you would be in a better position to know than me, but now you've _really_ caught my interest. I've never heard anything about a set of artifacts related to that one. How in the world did you get wind of this?"

"Oh… well…"

**One Day After the Battle, The White Plains, The Principality of Ghent**

"_Link_?" the voice was barely a whisper in his mind, such that Link almost missed it over the thunderous racket of Epona's galloping. He was riding hard, determined to reach the border outposts before news of the victory in the south made a strange Hylian mercenary a much more suspicious sight than it would normally be. Still, he reigned back and glanced at the hilt jutting from his saddlebags the moment he realized she was talking again.

"Arrika?" he spoke out loud, "You're all right! Thank the goddesses. I was worried when you weren't speaking at first."

"_Yeah__… __well__… __I__ rather__… __overextended __myself__… __when__ I __wielded __my __sword__… _personally_… __back __there_." She sounded pathetically weak, the words barely making an impression on his mind. "_I __was __quite __a__ ways__… __from__ being __prepared__… __for __that __kind__ of __exertion__… __but __I __wasn__'__t __about__ to __lose __my __newest __vessel __that __way. __Anyway__… __I __just __wanted__… __to __give __you __a__ heads __up__… __I__'__m __still __pretty __tired__… __and __I__'__ll__… __be __resting__… __for __a__ while._"

"Arrika?" Link got only a stifled yawn vented into his brain to answer his concerned inquiry. "Okay… yeah, you've earned a rest and then some."

"_Do__ me __a__ favor__…" _she was barely coherent as she forced out one short phrase after another past her exhaustion,_ "__don__'__t__ wield __the __sword__… __until __I __reawaken. __Unless__… __I _actively_… __oversee __the __enchantments__… __there __is __a _teensy _chance__… __that__ the __blade__… __might __actually _break_.__ That__… __would __be _bad."

"Um… sure. Not a problem."

_"__Goodnight__…"_ she winked back out of his mind.

"Oh! Hey, Arrika!"

_"__Mmmm?__"_

"I'll be picking up a little something to commemorate our new partnership, but that's just a side thing." The image he had in his mind was not something many people would call a 'side thing,' but there was no need to tip his hand there. "You saved my life back there, and I want to show you my gratitude. That's why I've got to ask you: if you could have anything at all in this world, what would it be?"

Arrika made a muzzy sound, totally unintelligible.

"That's okay, uh, I guess you can… tell me when you wake up again."

"_Nnn_…" she groaned, more asleep than awake, "_wanna__… __wanna__ see __m__'__sisters_."

"Sisters?" Link imagined a young girl with a family, her spirit consecrated into service in a magic artifact some untold ages in the past. Since the very civilization that spawned her was forgotten even by legend, anyone who'd lived then must be millenniums gone back to the dust of the earth. "I'm not so sure I can…"

"_Haven__'__t__… __seen__ m__'__sisters__… __since__… __since __t__'__Genesis__ Wars. __Miss__ '__em. __Miss__… __t__'__other__… __t__'__other __sword __maidens__…_"

"_Other __Sword __Maidens_?" Link nearly fell off of Epona. "You mean there are _more_ like you?"

A persistent snoring noise was the only response, and that quickly faded to nothing. After that, he was left with the request she'd made, whether she realized it or not. He honestly didn't relish more passengers now that he had one again, but she'd saved his life, and now he knew what she wanted. Perhaps he could spend some time digging up the others… at least to let Arrika say 'hello.' He certainly owed her at least the effort, in exchange for his life.

**Presently, Borderlands of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Well… it was sort of incidental to me finding the sword in the first place. The tapestries around the place were highly suggestive. Anyway, I have a nose for treasure, as I think I've sort of demonstrated at this point. I definitely want to give finding the other swords in the set a determined try, at least."

"Link, that sounds perfect!"

"It… it does?"

"Link, you'd be claiming powerful artifacts in the name of Hyrule! Barring more important undercover work, I can't imagine anything at all that would be a better use of your unique talents. If just one of these swords could alter the course of the largest battle of our age, imagine what we could do with the set!"

"Right…" Link didn't imagine for a second that he'd be 'claiming' the artifacts in the name of Hyrule. At this point he didn't even know if the whole thing was even feasible, what with Arrika being a little too unconscious to consult. "Well, I'm glad I've got that off my back anyway. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss, Your Majesty?"

Zelda and Link wound up chatting about this and that for at least an hour, and Link found that he could enjoy it entirely again. Still, there was a nagging voice in the back of his head that taunted him the entire time. After all, he'd gone through so much trouble to ditch all the weird, magical equipment he'd picked up on his divinely-appointed journey. Now he was once again apparently under the thrall of the goddesses, and he was once again personally bent on accumulating artifacts of uncommon power, now several orders of magnitude greater than ever before. Did that mean he was being groomed for some new battle? The possibility that he'd never stopped being led about by some kind of divine will was disturbing, and Link was quick to bury the entire concept in the simple pleasure of speaking with someone he didn't have to hide his true nature from.

That pleasure came to a sudden stop when Link spotted a lonely tree on top of a hill in the distance. He only noticed it subconsciously at first, since he'd been searching for shelter before he started talking to Zelda, but when a bonfire came into view as well at the same spot, and he was able to see the gibbet cages swinging from the tree's branches. Shocked, he felt a thrill of danger, and was suddenly preoccupied by the overwhelming desire to investigate it.

"Zelda… I'm going to have to go, something's come up here."

"'_Something_?'" It was impossible to miss the smile in her lips. "It's _always_ 'something' with you. But why not? A little late-night theater would be the perfect way to end the evening. I'll sit back and observe."

"Theater?" Link imagined her, wherever she was, watching him risk his neck like most people watch actors cavort around a stage. Rather than offended, he was suddenly self-conscious. She was practically the only person in the world he actually _wanted_ to impress.

He gave her a falsely indifferent acknowledgment and then pulled out his hawk-eye, trying to get a better look at the tree and whoever was tending the fire and gibbets. For all he really knew, this could be perfectly legal, but he wouldn't have bet on it for all the rupees in Castle Town. Legal processes didn't take place on the night of the full moon in the middle of nowhere, even if they _did_ sometimes include bonfires and man-sized hanging cages. When he heard the screaming, he stopped caring.

In a moment, he'd slung his weapons up onto his shoulder and dismounted, knowing Epona's noisy hooves would never allow him to sneak up on whoever was out there. Going by the light of the full moon, Link navigated the scrubby bushes and knee-high grass until he was only one hill away from where the lonesome tree graced the top of the otherwise bare-dirt hill. In a moment, he'd strung his bow and brought an arrow to bear on the scene, observing as best he could in the darkness and trying to figure what side he should jump in on. Screaming or no, now that he had a fairly clear view, he was more confused than ever.

There on the hill was a bonfire of no small size, mysterious because the only source of fuel he could see was the tree, which didn't look at all pruned back. Far more eye-catching than this, however, was the multitude of nude women in elaborate red and black body paint dancing around the fire in a loose circle. Each one wore a unique headdress of feathers or animal skins that concealed her face, but was otherwise unencumbered by clothing, and their naked skin under the flickering firelight was something else.

Still, for all their allure, Link's trained eyes never lingered as he assessed the scene, eventually localizing the intermittent screaming to a shrimpy man in his twenties bound up and constrained in a form-fitting cage hung from the tree's higher branches. He swayed where he hung, unable to move a muscle in the gibbet's tight embrace, but still able to beg for his life. Whatever language he was whimpering in was neither Hylian nor Ghentese, and the women might not have understood it either with the amount of heed they paid to his pleading. He seemed to have little illusions as to his fate, as one didn't need to understand his words to recognize that he feared for his life.

"That man is begging quite pathetically in Caredan," Zelda said, shocking the man who'd nearly forgotten she was listening in. "But who are the 'Red Women?' I can't get a proper image at this distance outdoors."

"Seems to be some witchcraft," Link muttered, deciding not to burden the Princess with details, "And not the kind where a creepy old crone offers you a magic potion in exchange for toadstools."

"I've heard of this kind of thing," Zelda said, sounding distant as her powerful imagination was fed, "they'll probably offer his life to summon a demon."

"Why would anyone _want_ to summon a demon?" Link asked as he edged down in the valley between his hill and the ritual site, keeping low in the short grass. He was determined to intercede—the voice that begged him to let the man die so he could have a throw-down with a demon was silenced when Link reminded himself that he was fresh out of ultra-magical weapons at the moment.

"Once you've attracted a demon's attention with a sacrifice, it's possible to ask it for gifts or power in exchange for… 'favors.'"

"Favors? What kind of favors could a _demon_ possibly want from a _human_?" Link asked, completely serious. Demons were crazy-powerful compared to people, at least if the one he'd faced in Ghent was any indication, and it didn't seem like a person would have much to offer.

"_Please_, Link, do I really have to spell it out for you?"

"Uh?" Link noted the extreme embarrassment in her complaint and grunted a non-committal sound. He didn't have time to figure her out when there was violence to be made.

Whatever beat allowed the dancers to keep time, Link couldn't hear it, but he could tell they were speeding toward crescendo by the way the jiggling picked up tempo. Now that he was just at the edge of the light cast by their bonfire, their shadows playing over him in time to their inaudible music, he was close enough to begin.

Drawing one of his last few bombs out, Link lit it with a spark off his gauntlets. In an overhand lob, he pitched it directly over the bonfire and onto the far slope of the hill, where it would doubtless roll some distance before—BOOM! The explosion startled the gaggle of women into shrieks, and they reflexively huddled together, using one another to hide their nakedness. It was a long moment of silence before one of the startled women shouted in anger, throwing the timid witches off of her left and right and shouting orders. Revived by this one, the apparent leader, several of the women drew short, wicked-looking knives from their headdresses and began to fan out into the darkness.

That wasn't nearly enough for Link's taste, and he hurried to toss another one of his bombs. This new explosion made everyone flinch, but cowed as they were by the head witch, they didn't repeat their embarrassingly feminine response from earlier. Instead, the head witch shouted new orders, and all but two of them formed up on her and stepped out into the darkness, apparently unconcerned with being unable to see.

The two remaining guards huddled up, but continued to look only in the direction the explosions had come from. This was more like it, and Link wasted no time dashing up out of the darkness. They heard his heavy footsteps, but before they could turn or make the slightest sound, Link caught a small, girlish head in each huge gauntlet, clocking their skulls together the next moment. He quickly caught one in each arm and settled them gently to the ground.

By now he'd been noticed by the caged man, who started to make incoherent sounds of extreme relief and urgency before Link silenced him with a desperate gesture. Link pointed at the huge, rusty lock holding the gibbet shut, and the lanky, underfed man flicked his eyes toward the tree trunk. There was an iron key hung from a cord around the tree's gray-barked trunk, and Link quickly dashed over to pluck it up. It was not until he had the key in hand that Link noticed the grotesque, misshapen faces that seemed to be formed by the bark itself. Still, he barely gave the unnatural sight a moment's attention before he jerked the key off the cord.

Before he could take one step, a low branch flashed down to grab his wrist like a living arm, and the nearest bark-face erupted to life and screamed an unholy bellow of bloody murder. Link was caught off guard, but acted by his most natural reflex—he popped the tree-face with a sharp left jab that shattered the wood and sent viscous sap spurting outward. The scream stopped as abruptly as it started, the hand came loose to flash over to the face and cradle it as the whole tree shuddered in agony and the other tree-faces slowly popped to life in turn, sobbing in pain.

There were screams from the darkness as the witches realized they'd been had, and Link dashed over to the gibbet to shove the key into the lock and twist it free. The gibbet cage came apart at the bottom like some kind of immense, aerial mousetrap, spilling the slight man onto the ground. He wept with gratitude, sobbing without reservation as he clung to Link's hips and gibbered in Caredan, or whatever language.

"Can you tell this guy we need to hurry and get out of here?" Link asked, trying to drag the man to his feet and speed back into the darkness at the same time, getting nowhere. "We can still elude them if we hurry!"

"Hylian?" the man said, surprised, before Zelda could utter a word. "Wait!" he stopped Link's progress with a desperate heave, earning him a bleak look from the much larger, if younger man. "We can't leave—there's another victim!"

Link followed his pointing hand, noticing another gibbet hanging higher in the tree. It had been on the opposite side of the thick branches while Link came in, and he'd been too preoccupied to spot it once it came into view. It didn't help that that cage's inhabitant was limp against the form-fitting bars, unmoving in the ill-lit night. All Link could make out was a bunch of glittering blue and some kind of lacy frills.

As it turned out, they'd overstayed their welcome anyway, because a complete circle of witches came out of the darkness from every direction at once. They stepped forward, naked but for paint and headgear, and closed a loop around the would-be hero and his distressed new dependent.

"Crap!" Link said, leaving it at that as he jerked the largest and finest of his troll-daggers out of the sheathe he'd fashioned from a few leather thongs. It was eight inches long and wickedly curved to a very slight hook at the tip, bladed on one side and serrated on the other. "Can you tell these ladies that I don't want to kill them, but I will if they don't let us go?"

"Tell them _what_?" the man sounded like he considered Link insane, but under the circumstances, Link needed a little more than that. The man provided. "These are the _Mujerouge_! It's a full moon! They can't be reasoned with!"

"Tell them anyway!" Link snapped. "I have to give them fair warning, at least!"

The man, too terrified to argue, stammered out a few wavering lines, pointing at Link. For his part, the hero tried to look menacing as he posed behind that vicious knife.

None of the women said a word, but the biggest, which was still two thirds Link's size, stepped forward and made a sound that nothing human could possibly have made. It was a vaguely feline noise, only huge, like a cat the size of an Ordon goat had just made its anger known. Link had enough time to note the mountain lion skin that formed the centerpiece of her sparse ensemble before she suddenly exploded in a wash of clear, gooey fluid.

Link shoved his new companion toward the tree as he dodged by reflex, narrowly avoiding a clawed lunge that would have ripped his throat out. He slashed with the dagger, and was rewarded with a feline grunt of agony as the furry, heavy shape darted away from him again. Link rolled to his feet, and when he turned, he was facing a vaguely humanoid creature with the hybrid features, claws, and all-over fur of a female mountain lion and a lithe, heavily muscled female body. Blood dripped down the fur of her abdomen where Link had gotten his shot in, but it hardly seemed to dampen the violent fury he could see in her animal eyes.

"Oh new friend?" Link called, "Anything you can tell me about these chicks that might help us survive?"

"They're a coven of shape shifters!" he quickly supplied, not helping at all. "I mean, of course you noticed that already, but—"

The cat-woman struck again, too fast to see. Unfortunately for her, she'd already tipped Link off about her speed, and he'd compensated for it. Turns out, she didn't really have anything else going for her. He ducked one unbalanced swipe that shredded again for his throat, then spun back from one that tried to spill his guts. At the end of the spin, his dagger swept across her exposed throat and tore a fine gash out of her trachea. She recoiled, clutching her throat with one paw, but was far from finished. The next moment, she lunged again, but lacked that blur of speed, giving her no chance at all. Link stepped away from the attack and managed to cut open her arm from wrist to elbow, unleashing a flood of new red gore.

Incredibly, she was still coming, and bared her fangs to take a bite out of whatever she could manage. Link caught this most clumsy attack of all, shoved down on her head, and stabbed her exposed back three times. She collapsed to the ground with a gurgle and a whimper, and the circle of women looked on in a range of emotions from disgust and nausea to deep terror.

Without a word, the third or so of the women that were wearing feathered headdress-masks transformed into awful, but beautiful half-woman half-bird things that might only be described as harpies. They all flapped off into the night while the wolf-decorated lead witch shrieked at their feathered backs. Before he could even look around again, the rest had exploded with that gooey fluid and were scattering into the darkness. At last, only the lead witch remained. She considered Link with eyes wild and defiant behind her mask, and so Link flicked the blood off his knife and brandished it, starting toward her. That was all it took, and she quailed before dashing into the night, a vague shape of a running wolf briefly visible before the darkness swallowed her, too.

"Well, they certainly didn't have much fight in them," Link half-complained as he slipped his knife back onto its harness and pulled a small whistle out of his pouches. He piped out a quick tune, getting an odd look from his companion. Soon, approaching hooves could be heard, and the sharp little man seemed to comprehend at once. By the time Epona arrived, he was already gathering his scattered wits.

"The 'Red Women,' as I suppose you might call them, are said to be made up of the wives and daughters of the richest merchants and nobles in Careda." His explanatory tone sounded masterfully natural, just as Zelda's did, and Link realized he was dealing with an intellectual of some kind, as though his scrawny build and pale complexion hadn't been enough of a tip. "They deal openly with devils to gain that power of theirs, trading human lives in the balance. There are also rumors that they engage in… wild… base… er… _debauchery_."

"Well, that one had no idea how to fight, and I doubt the rest knew much better. They probably relied on their power, both magic and money, to do all the work for them. Stupid, really. Bunch of fools." Link didn't know what a bauch was, or why it bothered this guy that the Red Women enjoyed removing them. Instead of dwelling on it, he stepped up onto Epona's saddle and used it to boost himself up to the second gibbet. It was the work of a moment to open the cage, and the limp person tumbled into Link's waiting arms. It was easy to identify the sensation of rough, dry scales under his fingertips, and he quickly leaped to the ground with this young, petite blue woman secure in his embrace.

"What the heck is a zora doing all the way out here?" Link wondered aloud.

And indeed, what he held in his beefy arms was unmistakably a zora. This specific young woman had the smooth, sleek, apparently sexless body common to her race, with only the gentle curve to her chest defining her gender at all. More than that though, she had long, flowing ruffles of white fin trailing from her forearms, hips, and shins. The gauze-like tissue sparkled with rainbow colors as the firelight played over them, even as it became obvious that she was dangerously desiccated in these dry foothills.

"Could you hold her for a minute?" Link asked, offering the slightly older man his burden as gingerly as he could manage. The stranger accepted her willingly enough, expecting her to be feather-light by the way Link managed her, only to be crushed back onto his rump with a lap-full of fish-woman the instant Link let her weight off his arms.

"You got a name, buddy?" Link asked as he riffled though his pouches and produced a vial one-quarter full of dazzlingly crystal-blue fluid. He moved over and began to examine the naked cat-creature he'd so systematically disassembled just moments ago.

"Anthony," he replied, distracted by the undeniable beauty of the alien creature he was just barely supporting. "Anthony Giovanni. But my friends call me Tony, and you, stranger, are the best friend I've ever had after what you just did for me! For a while back there, I was sure I'd be meat for some spawn of the dark places! You saved my life! I am your servant in all things, _mi__ amigo_."

"Wonderful, I'm Link. People call me Link." Link said, pouring the remaining contents of the bottle down the cat-creature's throat. Her body shuddered and emitted a vile hiss, but when the episode passed, not only had her wounds closed to little more than livid pink rents, but she'd transformed back to a human state. "Well, it looks like I won't be responsible for some rich tart's death now, so let's get before those witches decide to give weight of numbers a try. I'm afraid Epona's a little too tired to carry all of us, but if we put our silent companion here up on her saddle, we should be able to run a goodly ways."

"No complaints here!" Tony agreed, trying and failing to lift the young zora woman off of his lap. Link picked her up again and shifted her onto Epona's back, balancing her in the saddle as she slumped unconscious onto his steed's neck. When he had her secure, he took off into the night with one hand on her arm to keep her steady. They quickly put as much distance as they could between themselves and the ritual site, never giving a single glance backward.

**Some Hours Later, The Borderlands of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

At length, Link's seemingly inexhaustible stride slowed to a halt, and a completely winded, sweat-dripping, chest-heaving Tony nearly planted into his back as he continued to trudge along behind. The sky had a quality to it that suggested dawn was not out of the question, and there was no sound to the lanky man's ears but the thundering of his own tortured heart. That was why it was so distressing to hear Link ask,

"Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Water… running water."

Link quickly led their party down another hillside, seeking his way to a black alcove that was just one more shadow to Tony's pulse-blurred vision. He produced and lit a lantern, the first indication the scholar had that the traveler even possessed a light, and used it to illuminated a gaping cave mouth as his new friend wondered bitterly why he'd been forced to stumble on weeds in the darkness all this time.

In any case, the cool dampness of the cave was a welcome change from the warm dryness of the foothills, and while the horse was left just outside, the rest of them filed in, the zora maiden toted effortlessly in Link's arms. With Tony holding the lamp, they quickly found the moist interior to be abandoned, though Link pointed out the tracks of small animals that were currently foraging in the darkness. The running water was traced to a deep, cold, perfectly clear natural wellspring, and Link wasted no time slipping the unconscious zora into the water. The effect was almost immediate, with the dry, flaking scales flushing with a new, vibrant glow under the lamplight and the delicate rainbow frills trailing like a lacy train as she sank in.

"Will she be alright?" Tony asked as he collapsed onto the dirt-littered floor and heaved an exhausted sigh.

"She's a zora… in water…" Link trailed off, giving the man a dubious look.

"But… she's unconscious and… I just thought…"

"Listen, don't you worry about her. I have plenty of experience with these folks from the one's we've got back home. She had more trouble breathing before I dunked her, trust me."

"Okay." There was a lingering silence as Link proceeded to break out some camping supplies. From his bag of utter essentials, he produced a tin cup and a cooking pot. He dipped the cup into the spring and then drank deeply, draining four cupfuls before he passed it wordlessly to Tony. "Thanks," Tony said, but Link was already on his way outside with a pot full of water.

"I've got to take care of Epona, you can keep an eye on her," he nodded at the pool, "or try and get some rest yourself. At this point though, we'll move out at daybreak. If I figure it right, we're about half a day's walk from where I planned to end my shortcut and hop back onto the road, and there's no point wasting daylight."

Tony started to acknowledge him, but Link vanished into the darkness before he could get a word in. Left alone, he found himself far too wound up to imagine sleeping, despite his exhaustion, and treated himself to another cup of water. Link himself made a few silent trips out to his horse, ferrying her water in his cookpot, and then settled across from Tony in the spring chamber.

"Douse that lamp," he said suddenly. When Tony gave him a dumb look, he went on with, "Lamp oil costs money. Besides, this cave looks about right for natural lighting. Douse that lamp."

Tony obediently pulled the lamp's snuffer, sending the cave into pitch blackness. There was a moment of tense waiting, and then the walls, ceiling, and floor all began to glow with a gentle green light.

"Lantern Moss," Link said, his smile visible by the dim glow. "Figured it would grow here too. The gods tend to provide light in the most forsaken places, at least most of the time."

"Incredible. You must be a very well-traveled fellow," the Caredan scholar said, leaning back against the wall to try for some rest. "Just the journey from Hyrule to this backwoods is further than I can easily comprehend. A long journey in my mind is the two-day riverboat ride from Romali to Las Aguas. One night in a stateroom with call-service and fresh pastries for breakfast."

"Well, the soil around here looks about right for mealy-grubs. I figured I'd dig some of those for breakfast." Link sounded like he was trying to be helpful and comforting, but Tony just gave him a pained look.

"I'll pass… we should be able to trade for some real food on the way to Vien. At least, Vien is the last place I remember being, so it should be the closest city."

"Vien, huh?" Link thought back to the map he'd memorized during his brief stay at the Ghentese boarder post. "That certainly sounds about right. And, it's as good a place as any for me to start my own business. Heh, maybe you can help me with that. But… before that, I guess I should ask, how did a softy like you get involved with violent softies like those witches?"

"Well... I suppose I owe you that story, and much more besides." Tony sat up again and held his head like it was paining him. "I'm a herald by trade. Careda is a land of many different languages and customs, and people pay me to study the differences so they don't have to. Generally that keeps me adequately fed, but for more than that… I have to take some risks."

"Oh?" Link pulled out a hunk of hard travel bread, Ghentese military rations, actually, and began to saw off chunks with the serrated end of his troll knife. By soaking them in a cup of spring water, they became marginally edible.

"Who am I kidding?" the man shook his head, ashamed, "I've just plain got a gambling problem!"

"Ahhh, so your bookies figured selling you as a human sacrifice would be the best way to make sure you covered your debts?" Link guessed.

"Long-story-short… yeah. But enough about me. What's this work you have in Careda? As a herald, I know a little about most every kind of business. I may not be a warrior, but I understand a life-debt when it's owed. I'm at your service, Link."

"Okay," Link buried the knife into the bread with a thunderous _crack_, and then passed both to Tony. Tony eyed the knife, recalling the intestines it had been buried in just a few hours ago, and decided to take his chances gnawing on the stale loaf. "My own long-story-short—I've come to commission a work of art."

"Well, Careda is certainly the right place for that! So, is it a painting, a statue, maybe a gown or an item of jewelry? I'm familiar with all the best artisans, if only by reputation."

"It's something of a specialty item. My patron sent me here with the money and this sword," Link drew out Arrika's blade and gently stripped it of the tarp he'd wrapped it in, "and commands that I not rest until I've obtained a scabbard to match its quality."

"Dio above...!" Tony whispered, watching the dim glow-moss reflect across the blade's pristine form. The gems along its grip seemed to take in even that gentle light and put it out again as a white luminescence of their very own. "Such beauty! The Dons would have a war to claim such an item!"

"Indeed…" Link slipped it back into hiding, "And so you see why my patron recruited my expert services. In my hands, the blade and the artisan's fee will travel discreetly, unnoticed by greedy eyes. With me, both are safer than with a crew of guards… and now so are you and this pretty thing," Link pointed at the zora.

"A shrewd tactic…" Tony agreed, but with a hint of suspicion, "and an opportunity to thank you for saving me yet again. I suppose that's why you were off the main roads—you were trying to avoid people that might notice your expensive cargo?"

"Naturally. But that was no reason to pass by when I noticed your problem—I make a point to help out where I can. Anyway, how about it? Know of any artisans that deal in weapons both decorative and functional? My patron was quite specific that the scabbard had to match the sword's beauty and still be durable enough to make it through a battle."

"Oh, well, of course there's one," Tony bragged his knowledge immediately, "but it won't be cheap. For a sword that quality, the only man I can think of would be Alphonse Britoil—weapon smith to kings. He lives in Romali, smack in the middle of the confederation."

"Well, then we're bound for Romali. To the journey ahead!" Link toasted with his water cup, draining it dry one last time. Tony raised a chopped, chewed, and impaled rock of bread to match the gesture.

"Romali?" spoke a new voice, soft, high-pitched, and confused. Both men turned to see a delicate head peeking out from the water, two eyes lidded by exhaustion considering them with apprehension.

"Goodness, she's awake already!" Tony exclaimed, sitting up and addressing her fluently in something that sounded incomprehensible to Link. She gave him a blank look, and he switched to another language that sounded similar to the first, if accented differently. When he continued to get nowhere, he switched languages again, prompting the zora to hold up a hand and shake her head.

"Hold on, weren't you speaking Hylian Earlier? That's the only land-walker language I bothered to learn!" The question came out as a complaint, and the imperious quality to her tone made Link's gut clench by reflex. _Princess_, said his instinct. Wonderful. Was this the Goddesses at work again, making a point of complicating otherwise simple affairs? Or, perhaps he was just cursed?

"Yeah, Tony and I were speaking Hylian for my benefit, although it's a surprise to hear it from you. You're quite the mystery, lady zora, being out in the middle of the dry, dry foothills, and speaking a foreigner's tongue to boot?"

"I didn't ask to be stranded out here!" she nearly cried, "This whole journey has been a nightmare!"

"No need to fear anymore, you're safe enough with me," Link assured her, "But I gotta ask—why is a zora speaking Hylian in the wilderness of Careda?"

"My _name_ is Leeta," she reprimanded Link's rude tone, "and I learned Hylian because that's what my fiancé speaks! I was making the passage from my home in Atil, out in the Great Water, to his kingdom in a place called the Nayru River when my entire entourage encountered river fisher's nets. I remember snips of a journey, terrible dryness, unconscionable hours of discomfort, and then I wake up to two dry-skins grilling me like some kind of criminal!"

"Right, Leeta," Link pitied whatever sucker back at Prince Ralis' colony got to deal with this firecracker, "I'm Link, and this is Tony." Link quickly explained what he knew of her circumstances as far as the witches were concerned. "Anyway, I'll be happy to see you as far as the closest river that connects to the sea." He cocked an eyebrow at Tony.

"Ah, that would be the _Azure_," he supplied, "Vien is built right on its edge. It's one of the _Grande__'__s_ many tributaries."

"Well, that's settled then—"

"Wait! You said something about Romali!" Neither man denied her loud claim, but neither could see what she was getting at. "I overheard my captors talking about Romali! That must be where the rest of my entourage wound up! You have to take me with you!"

Link sighed, noting the implacable, rather petulant and juvenile resolve in that shouted statement. He looked a question at Tony, for fairness' sake keeping his personal disgust off his face. He didn't want the man thinking he had to lie to save Link's nerves.

"Well…" Tony began uncertainly, getting no hint from Link, "the quickest way from Vien to Romali is by boat. Actually, traveling by riverboat is easily the fasted way to get anywhere in Careda, once you get out of these southern hills and down onto the endless piedmont and tidewater."

"That settles it—you are going to take me to Romali so I can find my escort!" The statement was final, and Link nodded, buttoning his expression into something unreadable. It seemed his fate to baby-sit imperious women, and that thought made him extremely depressed.

**Reanalds Mansion, Hyrule Province**

"Good morning everyone!" Zelda nearly sang as she stalked into the large sitting room she'd secured as the location for today's staff meeting. Her closest advisers, the power elite that transformed her policies into actual government, sat arranged around a short coffee table in a series of heavily padded chairs. Each was flanked by his or her assistant with documents in hand, and a team of scribes were huddled around their portable writing tables in one corner, ready to take the day's minutes or produce quick memorandum and other official documents.

Everyone looked a little flustered—for most, the journey out to Reanalds Mansion for these meetings was becoming quite inconvenient. However, as Zelda shed her usual escort of armed guards, stewards, pages, and maids, the unbelievable positive energy that seemed to blaze from her smile picked up everyone's spirits and revitalized the most aged and decrepit minister. As she approached, everyone stood, and when she sat, they all settled themselves again, except for the guards that took up residence at the door and the assistants that were condemned to stand for the entire meeting by this rather too-small room.

"Good morning, Your Majesty!" Auru, ever comfortable in the royal presence, was the only one to dare a response. "If I might say, you look positively brilliant today. I take it you have some good news to share?"

"No, nothing of particular import," Zelda answered coyly, taken aback by his unexpected comment and reigning in her radiant happiness somewhat, "I suppose I'm just happy that things have been shaping up so well. Why? Does someone have _disappointing_ news?"

That last question had a barb on it, and everyone shifted uncomfortably, utterly distraught at the idea of disappointing Zelda. All the ministers left by now were the truly loyal, truly effective, whole-heartedly earnest workers that she had hand-picked from the remnants of the corrupt regency. To the last, they'd rather face execution than seem as though they were giving less than their all for the country and its radiant monarch.

"I'm sure there's nothing like that," Auru defended his colleagues, understanding better than they themselves why it was so hard for them to resist the monarch's charm. "In any case, we'd best get this all under way."

"Quite."

Zelda quickly marshaled her forces, allowing each minister to present a progress report in turn. Among other things, the new agricultural forecast was quite a bit more promising that it had once been, and the finances were shoring up nicely due to donations from concerned citizens—read: the early return on Zelda's own illicit investments. Of particular note was the fact that Ashei had cleared her first line of recruits for duty. By luring in frontiersmen and other hearty stock with incentive-level wages, she'd managed to produce a small force that would actually stand and fight rather than fleeing at the drop of a hat. Stringently applied, those men would be a large step in taking back the countryside from the menace of the humanoid monsters. On a less promising note, public trade was still in ruins, a mercantilist conflict in their own Castle Town mangling the already inbred and sickly economy. The situation was unacceptable, and had recently moved to the top of her List.

"Very well, then is there any new business?" Zelda prompted, when the reports had finished. Indeed, there was, and the group spent some time hammering out an overview of how to promote industrial expansion. For reasons she'd deigned not to share, Zelda had finally approved financial aid to the western regions, which included Hyrule's star enterprise—explosives. Now that the money was available, they had to decide how best to make that money into local growth. It was a hot topic—if they hoped to make any headway in international trade, fully exploiting Hyrule's most unique, keystone resource would be an essential step.

"Very well. Anyone else?" At this point, everyone who felt their issues merited royal and peer review had spoken, and the room was patiently silent. "Excellent. Now, for my own part... Today's meeting has affirmed in me a concern about what exactly our merchants think they're doing."

The words were calm and kind, but there was submerged vitriol there, and everyone hung on her every whisper as they waited to see her act out another administrative miracle. In only a handful of months, she'd become an object of near-religious awe among those of her staff that hadn't hated the way her meteoric rise had clipped their power. For these loyalists, every day was a chance to see her work new wonders.

"To address this, I want planning to begin immediately on a Royal Review of Castle Town. This is to include a full banquet with meet-and-greet, the invitations to include the city's merchant elite as well as the usual worthies." The scribes in the corner worked furiously to take diction of her edict. "Jenkins, I want you to work with Auru and Richards on compiling information on each merchant's local and international financial interests. I'll need some leverage if I'm going to explain to them why they should be more concerned with how they can help Hyrule than with lining their own pockets."

The three men nodded, the excessively junior Jenkins quite nervously and the experienced, middle-aged Simeon Richards, Minister of the Interior and unofficial spymaster, giving his monarch a pleasant smile. The Head Spy had utterly delighted in how the young Princess made use of the extensive network she'd inherited untarnished from her grandfather, and that he'd inherited leadership of from his own father. More than most, he understood what a treasure had been granted to Hyrule when this flower bloomed into her latent power.

"While were at it, Ashei," the woman sat to attention so sharply that her white braids jangled on her dress armor, "I should take the time in Castle Town for a long-overdue review of our expanding armed forces. I trust I shan't be disappointed?"

"Of course not, Your Majesty," she said, rather stiffly. Her eyes flashed, trying to determine what would have to be done to make that hasty promise come true.

"And even still, Donald," Zelda's chief steward stepped forward from his position in the corner, "This is a perfect opportunity for an Open Audience Day. I feel I've been negligent of the people out here in the country, inaccessible. Beyond that, the courts must have backed up a few cases requiring royal review by now, and those too should be attended. Since the castle is still under construction, an outdoor area will have to be prepared to hold court. Please see to all the details."

"It shall be done as you say, Your Majesty," Donald stepped back again, already accounting for the dozens, if not hundreds, of things that would need to be prepared for such an undertaking.

"Naturally, such an undertaking shall require me to stay in the city for several days. I will… _regretfully_… inform Lord Reanalds that I will have to take leave of his hospitality."

A series of furtive smirks made their way around the room. Zelda's people had easily managed to pick up on her dislike for the atrocious man, and no one had to hear the rest of that statement to know what she meant. "_Perhaps__ I__'__ll __be__ able __to __make __it __permanent __leave_," did not have to be said.

**Reanalds Mansion Game Room, Hyrule Province  
**

"Ah, Robert, what is the news?" Asked Lord Reanalds from his position at the head of the billiards table in his personal game room. He made quite the dashing figure in his smoking jacket, a bandage over his recently ruined eye and a cue stick in his hand. The walls around him were crowded with trophies from his most memorable hunting expeditions, punctuated by dart boards and portraits of himself and his distinguished ancestors. Prizes and banners from battles several centuries older than the mansion itself lined one entire wall, with space left for new trophies that would never come if Hyrule's extensive peace continued as it had.

"My Lord," replied the man named Robert, a servant wearing the uniform of the Royal staff rather than that of Reanald's own people. "I put my ear to the place on the wall you indicated, and I was indeed able to hear every word of Her Majesty's private council. To abbreviate, she is going to move back to the city to attend to a large arrangement of official business, and she has hinted that it will continue as a permanent withdrawal from your hospitality."

"Damn that Bitch!" Reanalds shouted, chucking the pool cue like a javelin and burying it in the empty eye socket of a great moose trophy. "At this rate she'll be out of my power before I've half begun my plans!" He fumed and muttered for some time, wringing his huge, caloused, muscular hands and pacing up a storm. "There's no choice then," he finally concluded out loud, "Robert, make your way into the staff that prepares the Princess's meals. I will shortly have a package for you to deliver into her tea."

"My Lord!" Robert shouted, looking suddenly pale and panicked.

"Oh calm yourself, man!" Reanalds chided, sounding offended, "I'm not going to harm her! She's my ticket to the throne, and no good to me dead! What I have in mind will simply… make her a bit more… _pliable_."

"But… but…"

"Enough man! Have you forgotten who owns your sister's entire homestead? I'm certain you wouldn't want to see her and her beautiful children pitched out on their skinny asses, now would you?"

"No… no, My Lord." Robert lowered his head. "I will transfer to the catering staff by tomorrow."

Robert turned and left, and Reanalds smiled to himself, preening. In a way, this promised to be the outcome he would have eventually come to no matter what. Somehow, that she-devil resisted the powerful charms of his own son, which mystified the middle-aged noble. He was a chip off the old block, at least in the looks department, and what more did haughty, spoiled little royal spawnlings really care about? It was supposed to have been as simple as luring her into a dalliance with the boy, ensuring a pregnancy with the fertility drug his apothecary produced, and then blackmailing her into wedding their families together. At the worst, his grandson would be heir apparent.

But the Princess had proven sterner stuff, her grandfather's child, of all the rotten luck. Extreme measures were necessary to make his dreams reality before she escaped his influence, or worse yet, turned on him with all the power of her hellishly loyal government. Fortunately, he was prepared for this.

Lord Reanalds' disposable income had long been tied into paying agents to search the world for oddities of a rather… specific nature. Aphrodisiacs and love potions were his hobby, at least as much as plowing a path through all the maidens in his realm was. Of late, agents out west in Ghent had turned up a fantastically rare and quite magical herb. Once rendered, it was called The Suitor's Friend. Mixed into warm water, a single sip of it would transform the most contrary bitch in the world into a tittering sop. Besides reducing them to air-headed ninnies, it made them pliable and agreeable to most anything. In certain circumstances it would also destroy inhibitions more perfectly than any amount of alcohol. What's more, it was permanent.

Reanalds rubbed the bandage over his ruined eye and salivated at the thought of humbling that royal sow. Oh, his son would be the one to marry her… but once reduced to her proper humility, there was no reason her dear old father-in-law couldn't impose on her 'hospitality' from time to time. And why wait for the wedding? He could give her a few 'lessons' to get her ready to 'entertain' Jr. Yes… that sounded like just the ticket.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

Not much to say about this chapter. It is interesting to note that because this whole trilogy is being published in this one online compendium, I didn't have to waste any time summarizing earlier events for new readers who might have picked up the sequel first for some strange reason. I swear, there are some modern novel series where as much as the first quarter of the book involves little more than recapping the previous entries in the series.

The decision to have shape-shifters as major opponents in this new book was tentative and quickly abandoned. For reasons I will go into later, I instead decided to develop the concept of 'demons' as opponents for a Link that is getting farther and farther from a state where ordinary human and monster opponents are a meaningful challenge. That being said, I have to wonder, in retrospect, if there was any point to having the witches be shape-shifters at all. Then again, there's really no reason to have them not be shape-shifters, either, so I left it in. It also opens avenues for future plot developments around the Twilight Princess game mechanic of Link transforming into a wolf.


	16. Trouble on the Road

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 2: Trouble on the Road**

**The River Azure, The Confederation of Cardea**

"Well, don't you look comfortable?" Tony observed, rather sarcastically. He'd stumbled across Link where he was lounging in an out-of-the-way corner of the C.M.S. _Isabella Dulce_, the merchant ship that had taken them on as passengers in Vien. Link had his head pillowed on a pile of spare ropes and his bare feet dangling over the aft of the ship, a length of heavy fishing cord wrapped securely around his gloved hand and trailing down into the boat's wake. The late summer sun played on his bare chest and legs, as he'd forsaken his usual armor and harness for nothing more than a pair of knee-length sailor's breeches. He looked intensely comfortable.

The ship's captain, manning the rudder that helped keep it on course, gave the layabout a dirty look from his nearby station, but said nothing. His specific instructions had been to do whatever they wanted as long as they stayed away from the pole-men. The two teams of ten men on either side of the ship brandished their ten-foot-poles in expert rhythm, and couldn't be interrupted. In sequence, they would march in twin lines to the front of the ship, plant their poles on the shallow riverbed, and then walk across the tacky, tar-soaked pole-deck, pushing the ship forward in one unified motion. It was exhausting work, but by far the fastest way to move goods in the weak current, shallower waters, and finicky winds of the inland areas.

"Mmm?" Link roused from his cat nap and gave Tony a guiltless look. "Well, I offered to hire on as crew instead, but they snubbed me. Figure as long as I'm paying them to get the job done, I might as well enjoy the leisure time. I'll bet Epona is enjoying the rest too, though I doubt it could be too pleasant down in the hold."

"We're just lucky we found a trader equipped to carry horses so quickly," Tony reminded him, sitting down on a nearby spool of mooring cords to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. "Vien is the south-most inland river port, so we do get Ghentese horses up here every now and then from the overland trade routes, but it's hardly all that common. To have spent less than a day waiting in the city is a strange blessing."

"Well, I do have a bit of luck when it comes to traveling." Link stared out across the sparkling river water and then lay back on his rope pillow, trying not to break into laughter as he considered what he'd just said. "Well, anyway, I've certainly been at it long enough to know how bad it can get, but I've somehow managed to avoid the worst sorts of hardship. I have to agree with what you said in the back country. Dropping a gilder and getting someone else to do the hard part of traveling is definitely better."

"Yeah, but I was surprised," Tony frowned, "You didn't even blink at the outlandish price the captain quoted." He looked at the nearby riverboat captain, confident that the grizzled old worker couldn't understand Hylian. "Don't you need that money to pay the commission? I can't guess how much you're carrying, but Britoli is perhaps the greatest weapon artisan in the world, and he demands prices to match that reputation."

"Oh? Was that a lot he charged us?" Link looked pensive for a moment. "Well, there are lots of ways to make money, and I'm being reimbursed for anything I pay out of my own pocket. I'm sure it will all work out."

"Hah! In this economy? Trade has been on an international decline for a decade, ever since Hyrule's commerce dried up like a grape left too long on the vine. Uh, no offense." Link nodded with a smile. "You'll be lucky to find a lick of work in Careda that's not controlled six times over by the mafia and the guilds… as though those were really different these days."

"_Please_, Tony," Link practically laughed the warning right off, "trust me. I can provide services that others simply _can't_. The way my little buddy Malo explained it to me, that's all there is to making money. Relax." Link blinked a few times. "And what's a mafia?"

"You don't…?" Tony stopped himself, "right. The mafia is the organized criminal underworld. They buy off the town guards and have free reign to do virtually whatever they want to the rest of us. The Dons—those are the feudal landlords—they don't care, and the merchants that run the oligarchies in the cities are definitely in bed with them. Mostly they just control illegal gambling and do a little extortion racketeering on the side. The bookie that sold me as demon-meat works for them… and I think that by itself should tell you what kind of people they are."

Link just hummed his understanding and attended to his fishing line. He jerked on it a few times, feeling the weight of the day's catch. Tony noticed this and smiled.

"So, our friend is still with us?" he didn't need to say anything more.

"Heh. Yeah. I was just about to finish up here. Take a look." Link stood up and leaned against the weight of the line pulling out behind the boat. He wrapped the wires around his hands and started spooling the thick-gauge rope in a hand-over-hand reeling motion that devoured foot after foot. Finally, he began to drag up floating pontoons. At the end of this extensive apparatus was a huge affair of cord basket-woven like a stretched-out butterfly net, filled to bursting with struggling fish. Link groaned with the effort of hauling this huge load free of the water, and Tony nearly fell over trying to back out of the way. The captain glared further as Link's massive fishing net took up a good quarter of the ship's stern, shouting angrily at the sweating pole-men, but in the end just happy they weren't slowed by the net's drag anymore. Link worked like a madman, quickly loading the fresh fish into a barrel of cold river water and capping a lid onto its wriggling contents.

"Amazing as that was, Link," Tony cut in quietly when Link finally settled down to lay flat on the deck and sweat, "The Fisherman's Guild will be after your ass if you try and sell those to anyone."

"I've got an idea or two about that," Link cut him off, "You just take my advice and leave everything to me. Our mutual acquaintance has us covered. The agreement for enlisting my aid was that she'd help fill the net _and_ move the merchandise," Link nodded off toward the ship's wake. Tony looked that way, and could just see a brilliant rainbow glitter as a lace-like fin broke the water for a moment, the young zora woman keeping pace with the fat merchant boat like it was standing still.

**South Hyrule Field, Hyrule Province**

"Well, that certainly isn't right," Ashei said, speaking to no one in particular as she set aside her pair of hawkeyes and frowned. Behind her, a convoy of carriages containing all of Hyrule's senior ministers wound quickly down the road. Ahead of her, a pack of moblins had tossed up a barricade midway over a bridge that ran over a wandering branch of Nayru's river. A handful of their riding boars were leaned up against some heavy wooden planking and bits of weighty garbage and scrap, making the narrow wooden trestle utterly impassible.

"What's the matter?" Zelda asked. The young monarch had forgone all advice on the matter and chosen to leave behind the comforts of a carriage and ride to Castle Town on horseback, her steed for the occasion being a docile Caredan palomino borrowed from Reanalds' daughter. She was dressed in a pair of padded brown velvet riding britches and a jacket of elaborate white leather armor bearing the royal Triforce symbol over a matching silk shirt.

The two Hylian soldiers that flanked her, armed to the teeth and clad in quarter-plate, looked incredibly nervous at how exposed their charge was. It didn't help that, despite the fact that they were Ashei's best men, they were still terribly green and untried warriors. Zelda herself had insisted that all the guards from the convoy be royal soldiers rather than the tougher, more experienced men retained by the nobles. It was a sign of independence, she'd said, but now it was an awful liability, and Ashei was making a sour face at her prospects.

"There's a moblin roadblock on that bridge," Ashei said, forgetting all formality. "We'll have to go around to the next one."

"That will take hours! We'll never make the city before sunset!" Zelda turned to look toward the bridge, squinting, but still unable to see much with her unaided eyes. "We have soldiers here, why can't we simply clear them away? They're just _moblins_."

"Oy." Ashei turned her head to the sky and begged the goddesses for patience she could use on these impetuous civilians. "Well, Your Majesty, as your war minister, I feel it necessary to advise you that, in my _professional_ opinion, using our escort to clear the bridge represents a risk the potential reward simply doesn't justify. If we uncover the carriages to attack the bridge in force, they're vulnerable to an ambush. Moreover, the bridge is a mildly hardened defensive position which we have _nothing like_ the equipment necessary to assault. The situation falls into the tactical category of 'why the hell bother in the first place?' It's not like the dumb creatures hold the only south pass to Kakariko, we can go around and risk nothing. I figure we should do that, rather than attacking and finding out that they might well be smarter than they're letting on."

"Ashei, I respect your opinion," Zelda said, putting a little of her magic voice into it, "but this is an unshakable matter of principle. I can't be allowing demi-human bandits to dictate the route I take over my own roads! Now, if your troops can't handle it, I suppose it wouldn't be unconscionable to send for help from the local landlord…"

"NO!" Ashei snapped, feeling her professional pride burn to life and not exactly sure why. "No. It's a dumb idea, but if those are your orders, then I know what my duty is. Just give me a minute to decide on a way to clear the blockade that doesn't involve burning the bridge down."

Zelda rode back toward the carriage train and left Ashei to shout irately at her lieutenants. The young monarch had absolute confidence that the general could carry this sorry little excuse for a skirmish without trouble. Meanwhile, despite Ashei's simplistic opinion, it was of the utmost importance that the crown's personal army started to build experience and confidence. The still-budding plans that nested deep in her heart would rely on the skills of these brave people.

Zelda reined in her horse by the lead carriage, looking over her shoulder to see Ashei lead a team of ten men with swords and shields off toward the bridge. She smiled, turning to count the remaining forces. There was an archer on top of each of the five carriages, and five riders left over besides. A glance to either side revealed wide open grasslands in pristine emerald, the gorgeous expanses stretching all the way to the distant, misty mountains. With such a clear landscape, Zelda had to wonder why Ashei could ever have spent a moment's concern on ambushes.

Perhaps Zelda should have taken more care with her thoughts, but her general lack of experience had not hardened her to fortune's often whimsical ways as Link's had jaded him. No sooner did she assume an ambush would be impossible, than did a pack of lizardmen spring up from their prone positions in the tall grass and rush the carriages from all sides.

With a shot of adrenaline, Zelda's mind erupted into overdrive on all three gears. One section was instantly preparing spell patterns. The second portion ran probability projections of potential tactical responses as best her limited experience could manage. The third pondered languidly about how the huge, powerful bodies and sturdy, rugged steel equipment of the reptilian humanoids put to shame any book Zelda had ever pursued on the subject of this particular demi-human species. That part also wondered why moblins and lizardmen seemed to be working together when both hated each other as much or more than they hated humans. Alas, the final effect of this disjointed response was that Zelda was paralyzed, even as four enormous armored warriors blitzed her comrades.

Before she could shout a single order, the lizardmen had closed half the distance to the carriages. Shocked archers let off ineffectual arrows, though even the best shots would be hard-pressed to penetrate both the hard armor plates and tough hide of their opponents. As they approached their prey, they broke apart, two angling for the three-rider escort at the rear, and two rushing Zelda and the two riders at the front. Zelda watched one of them sprint in at her, an arrow zinging off of its helmet, and realized that all three of her mind's cycles had gone blank. An order of some sort stood half-formed on her lips, but all she could comprehend was the look of vicious delight in the monster's evil red eyes. Suddenly, it was upon her, its curving scimitar arcing up for the attack.

"Your Majesty!" A horse and armored man were suddenly between her and the monster. A kite-shaped shield bearing the Triforce symbol rose to meet the sword, and was battered down into the man's helmet by the overwhelming strength of the monster's arm. Being mounted made the man equally tall as the gigantic reptile, but he could not match the creature's brute strength. The difference in their skill was also glaring, for the beast's next blow hammered his shield off to the side, and while his sword rose to parry another attack, it was the monster's shield that came in to batter his face. His helmet flew away, revealing a boy of no more than eighteen with military-clipped brown hair and a terror-drained face. Disoriented by the skull-bash, he had no defense as the quick sword rose and fell once more.

The blade found the crease between the plate on the boy's shoulder and his neck, digging down and splitting his breastplate with a deafening _crack_ of sundering steel. Carried on by a hellish momentum, it carved a path into his chest, cracking every bone and cleaving his heart in twain. The whole process took less than a second, and as the blade heaved free, blood exploded out in a shower that washed back and drenched the left side of Zelda's face and stained a crimson streak across her white leather dress armor. She watched as the youth tumbled out of his saddle, and realized then that the only thing between her and the beast was his riderless horse.

"Save the Princess!" someone shouted, but all Zelda could see was the red ruin of the soldier that had died, simply because she'd made a terrible mistake. The lizardman cleared the horse aside with a swat from its sword and hissed a horrific sound out between its teeth. Its gore-washed blade whipped up again to finalize the princess in a single stroke, and then the world washed brilliant white in an eye-stabbing dazzle of intense light.

For a moment, Zelda couldn't understand what had happened. She blinked tears out of her eyes as vision slowly returned, innumerable spots and stars clouding her sight. When she could finally see through the painful blur, she noticed that the lizardman had stopped its attack at the height of its swing. It stood frozen, its eyes wide in shock, and it was a long instant before Zelda realized that this was because of the huge, smoking hole that had been seared though its torso. A pit of black char surrounded a gaping tunnel through which Zelda could clearly see the grass behind it, although this astonishing view ended as quickly as the very dead monster could fall over. Glancing along the line suggested by the hole, she traced it back to a carriage door that stood open by a slight crack, where a wrinkled hand now withdrew into the concealing shadows within.

The next thing she knew, Zelda was wheeling her terrified, unruly horse around to face the other closest lizardman, who was battering her other bodyguard relentlessly, each wild block from him threatening to send him off his horse. Her mind cleared like it was shedding a layer of ice, and the half-formed spell on her first cycle completed, even as she swung the royal spellblade from its sheath on her saddlebags. It was the work of an instant to channel the spell through the sword's ancient runes, and she held it aloft with its point lain over her extended left hand like the blade was an arrow she was aiming at the lizardman's heart.

Without a word from her, an irregular blob of blazing, nearly electric blue-white energy blurted from the tip of the sword and floated gracelessly at the preoccupied reptile. Though it hit with the force of a snowflake's fall, it instantly bloomed into a blast that wracked the beast with convulsions and illuminated it with magic force that pierced its bones so brilliantly as to make its skeleton visible through its skin. The monster wailed piteously as it was broken on the spell's remorseless assault, and then slumped backward, stone dead.

"Move out those carriages!" Zelda shouted, kicking her horse into a gallop that nearly became a runaway sprint as the terrified creature took off in its instinctual response to danger. With a soothing grip at its neck, she managed to ease it back just in time to not overshoot the rear of the carriage column. She arrived to see the last two lizardmen fleeing back into the grass. Arrows stuck in their backs as they fled, and she raised her sword to release another spell, but they suddenly dipped into the grass and vanished. Zelda considered following them, for they had obviously found some underground grotto to hide in, but reconsidered when she saw the battered, bloody state of the three horsemen that had held off those two during the short, brutal skirmish.

Of course, by then it was over, and less than a minute had elapsed since the attack began. There were those among her ministers that were only now leaning out to see what the matter was as the carriages jerked forward and sped away from the ambush site on her last orders. Doubtless there were those who didn't even know a battle had just taken place. Of course, Zelda would never be able to forget, and she already found a cloud of new thoughts descending to paralyze her three cycles in wracking confusion.

**Riverport Village Salicilli, The Confederation of Careda**

Link kicked back in the rickety reclining deck chair he'd 'borrowed' from a local waterfront bistro and watched the sun set over the distant, barely-visible opposite shore of the river. On this shore, a huge rock outcropping created a natural cove protected from the river's current, and it had become the site for a quaint little trader's rest stop. Off to one side, the greater part of this sleepy little dockland bustled with afternoon business, but in the isolated corner he'd occupied, there was nothing to disturb his quiet contemplation of the brilliant vista. No, nothing at all, at least until Tony walked up, a heavy bundle of iron rods sharply slowing his progress.

"Okay, Link," he gasped, dropping the bundle of metal to the boardwalk's stone buttresses with a horrible clanging noise. "Here. I have what you asked for, and I _didn't_ ask any questions. Now that you have a bunch of harpoons, what the _devil_ are you going to _do_ with them? The guy at the blacksmith's shop thought I was mad to want these, and I think I might have to agree with him. There aren't any fish in this river big enough to hunt with harpoons that you wouldn't have better luck going after with heavy line and hooks!"

"Now, now, Tony," Link didn't look up from his sedate relaxation as he answered, "Telling you would ruin the surprise. Just clear back a ways and keep a close eye on these waters. I'm about to make us some more seed money."

"Money… from harpoons?" Tony watched Link skeptically as he finally stood up and began to stretch without urgency. The carved muscles so efficiently hidden by his armor under normal circumstances were still on display, as he wore nothing now but those same dirty sailor's breeches and, oddly enough, his horribly trail-beaten boots. "Now you've got me wondering. I mean, I know that scam with the fish worked out—although you could have mentioned that Leeta _told_ you how the fisherman's guild pays cash to zoras for extra stock out of contract—but what are you up to now? That crotchety skinflint at the smithy charged five gilders each for pounding out these rush-job harpoons. Twenty five gilders is not the kind of money you can recoup on a moment's notice."

"Okay, if you're just going stand there to sweat over it, I'll give you a hint." Link finished stretching and sat back on the chair, bringing up his exotic-looking bow and stringing it. A quiver lay nearby, stuffed full of fresh arrows from the local fletcher. "Do you remember those bounty posters nailed to the mooring posts?"

"I pointed them out to you, after all." Tony reminded him with annoyance, "but those were just a gag. No one expects any ship that can sail in these shallow waters to actually take on _El_ _Gran Diablo_. An octarock that size could sink a caravel. The local magistrate just posted those notices so it could pretend like they were actually doing something about the problem. I heard from the innkeeper that that vicious piece of work rolls into the ports around here now and then and wrecks them up something awful. It doesn't eat anything or try to nest here—it just likes to kill and destroy."

"Right, which is why I have no qualms about profiting from its demise." Link was smiling.

"You're going to go out and hunt _Diablo_?"

"Wrong," Link shook his head, sending his unruly shocks of brown hair tumbling, "According to mine and Leeta's best estimation, _he's_ coming _here_ again. It took the two of us a while to figure what it meant when she noticed how all the sea critters known for their brains had cleared out for nearly a mile in every direction, but it's obvious enough now. The last thing Leeta mentioned before I told her to go hide was that she could taste death in the water, even over the offal of these docks. I figure that's a pretty clear giveaway."

"_You say it's coming here_?" Tony was suddenly possessed with the look of someone who was trying to run five ways at once as he glanced out over the water in a panic and then turned to run, then stopped again and turned back to find Link as calm as ever. "We have to warn people! We have to tell everyone! That thing is a killer!"

"Warn them how? By shouting how a foreign vagabond and a talking fish have a hunch?" Link rolled his eyes as he unpacked a whole bundle of vicious, long troll daggers and attached them around his chest on an improvised bandoleer. "Trust me; I have a little experience with managing people in danger. Better we just wait for the big bastard to show up and give people an early warning then."

"Oh, well, we won't have to wait long then!" Tony almost whimpered as he pointed out over the water, quite distracted from his earlier fear by a new, bowel-loosening terror that planted him on the spot. His finger pointed out toward the middle of the entrance to the river cove, where a huge, dark bulge had formed in the otherwise calm current and was now plowing in toward the docks.

"Beautiful," Link whispered, utterly delighted. The response was so unexpected, Tony actually managed to pry his eyes away from approaching sea monster to gape at his friend in shock.

What he saw on Link's face was a look of entirely unsettling pleasure, a kind of sneering euphoric smile that chilled his blood anew. Immediately, the young man staggered back, and then turned to begin shouting urgently at the few remaining dockworkers in first one language, then another. A cry of alarm rose up in response, and people dropped whatever they were doing to run inland. Up on the shore, the cry spread further and further, people with property on the waterfront hurrying to barricade doors and windows and many ushering the nearby stragglers into cover. Mostly though, people just ran to put distance between them and the waterfront, dropping their burdens and picking up their children.

"Alright, big boy," Link spoke to himself in a low whisper as he hefted his bow, his harpoons, and a last string of other equipment and started walking down the pier to meet the approaching surge of water, "let's see what you've got."

Link broke into a run and managed to make it to the end of the pier before the surge was halfway to shore. Suddenly the dark shape in the center of the surge stopped, but the water itself, possessed of hellish rolling momentum, continued to plow toward land like a creeping hill. As it hit the shallower water, it rose up out of the river to a good eight feet and rushed in like a moving wall.

For the always-ready hero, a quick glance across the modest docks caused a nearby hand-operated cargo crane to leap into focus. In a reflex motion, he whipped a claw shot off of his bandoleer and fired it before most would have been able to even aim. The claw's teeth gripped into some netting hanging from its highest beams and he was rocketing up over the docks, even as the rogue wave caused the floating wooden world to explode with noise and motion. Everywhere beneath him, water crashed and wood splintered, sending a chill spray laced with splinters splashing up to dog his heels as he flipped up around the beam and perched on top of it. Before the wave had half settled, he was stable on the crane's squared-timber neck and had his bow out and ready.

Back down on the water, a frightening quiet began to settle as capsized shipping slowly sank into the shallow water and innumerable crates and barrels of ruined cargo bobbed in the turbulent current. That dark shape out at the edge of the deeper water shattered the silence when it burst up out of the river and shrieked out a high-pitched keening roar that sounded for all the world like an evil cackling. Link drew a bead on his prey, even as he started to evaluate it for possible weak spots.

It was, much as the vague descriptions implied, a gigantic octarock. The octopus-like monster was a good ten tons at least, making the modest riverboat that had brought him to this port look like a fisherman's dingy by comparison. Each of its flat, plate-like yellow eyes was as wide as Link was tall, and the bulbous purple expanse of its main body was etched with scars and parasitic polyps that spoke of a long, violent span of life experience. The horrifying sucker-mouth perched below its eyes and above its immersed tentacles gaped like the muzzle of a cannon, and as it tensed suddenly, Link was reminded of where these things got the latter half of their name.

With a sound like a channel lock draining, the thing gulped up water and inflated the launching bladders to either side of its mouth, and then leaned back in the bay. There was a deafening _whump_, and a spray of pressurized water splurted into the air, a rock of hard, petrified water scum, fish bones, and gravel careening into the town like a cannonball. Somewhere in the port village, an explosion announced that the projectile had found a wooden building and transformed it into flinders of firewood. Screams and moans of woe rose from the hiding villagers as the thing let out another keening cackle, its yellow plate-eyes flashing with unmistakable malice. As was the nature of these things, it immediately submerged again to scoop up more river offal and form another scummy, hard projectile. When next it rose dart-like from the depths, it was met with three quick arrows in its right eye. Link fired so fast, he didn't notice the first two glance harmlessly of the glass-hard eye until the third one stuck fast in the soft, fleshy skin around its mouth. As it was, he succeeded in doing nothing but drawing its attention, an inquisitive sound gurgling from its gullet as it shifted in the water to see what had just tickled its eyebrow. It spotted him instantly, and though its features were unable to move, Link could tell that it immediately grinned an evil smile.

"Not good," Link muttered, dropping his useless bow off onto the docks below as he snatched up his claw shot again. He heard the huge gulping noise as it primed its launching bladders anew, and immediately leaped from the crane. Before he'd fallen three feet, he'd turned in midair and fired at the crane again, catching his fall and becoming an almost impossible target as he swung through a wide arc. Of course, the cunning old bastard just aimed for the neck of the crane. One deafening _crack_ later Link spun uncontrollably into the drink.

Somehow, the arc of his swing had carried him much further out into the water than he could have imagined. When he could finally orient after his stinging impact with the river, he found the docks a good twenty feet away. Spinning in the water, he spotted the giant octarock slurping up more river slurry, a slave to that instinct, and then it spotted him. Its eyes flashed through a quick shade of red before it seated itself on its stubby tentacles and surged toward him in an aquatic bull-rush. The way the thing was moving, he'd be smashed unconscious, and so he waited until the last possible instant before doing the thing he'd come up with earlier to answer this exact situation.

With a coordinated click of his heels, Link's boots suddenly put on seventy five pounds of solid iron each, and Link dropped through the water like a stone. The spiking water pressure squeezed the air out of him as he plummeted, but the rushing beast passed inches over his head, the surging tide of its passage attempting to draw him into a tumbling whirlpool that only his weighty footwear protected him from. Pinched chest burning, Link hit the river bottom with a muted _thump_ and sank ankle deep in the silted mud. Mayor Bo's magic iron boots had just saved his skin again.

As Link deactivated the iron weights and drew out his clawshot, the octarock broke the surface and began to look around for the broken bits of him it intended to sup upon. Apparently its cunning had reached a limit, for it sniffed about for blood without ever detecting the lithe shape that silently cracked the water's surface behind it. Link, meanwhile, let his eyes narrow in victory. There on the beasts back was a raw, red splotch where some trick of nature had obviously left its vitals exposed. As he had ever found in the past, every opponent, no matter how large, had a weak spot one could strike at. This one happened to include a knot of barnacles just above it that invited his clawshot like a red carpet.

Before it could clue in, Link's clawshot clapped onto its back, and he was flying right at that vast red blister with one of his harpoons extended like a lance. He struck true, the harpoon digging a good foot into its essential organs, and the world was rocked as the creature thrashed in agony.

Link was instantly pitched thirty-odd feet straight up into the air, tumbling like a rag doll as he reeled from the monster's sudden bucking. As he slowed at the top of his upward journey, he managed to pull out another harpoon. Below him, the octarock was flat on its back in the water, its launching bladders full and ready to pluck him out of the air like a child scoring a dove with a stone. He flung the harpoon straight down before the creature could make good, and fortune smiled as it whistled straight down the beast's taut gullet.

The octarock immediately choked, its launching bladders backfiring out into the river and then reflexively wheezing in two great loads of warm summer air. Link plummeted down into the river in a textbook dive that spared him most of the pain such a fall should have warranted and surfaced as quick as he could, arriving to find his opponent in great distress. With its launching bladders full of air, it was rolling on the surface like a balloon, unable to submerge. However, it quickly used its tentacles to turn lightly on the water and focused its rage-red eyes on the tiny creature that has so badly harmed it. It rushed him without preamble, skittering over the water like a roach over open land and reaching a crushing speed in an instant.

"_They never learn_," Link thought, as he used the iron boots to dip a good five feet down in half a second, the octarock careening over him in a wide miss. He quickly surfaced again and brought about his clawshot. The thing was moving far too fast to latch a clear shot at its back again, but he still managed to shoot out and score a hit on its side, and he was flying through the air to mount it the next moment.

It twisted suddenly, tearing his clawshot free, and Link was left skittering on its vast back like a pebble on a slimy dome. There was no purchase to be had for his frantically reaching fingers, despite the frequent knots of clinging polyps, and he finally plucked a dagger from his bandoleer and stabbed into the tough flesh in a wild swing. The octarock hardly seemed to notice this little prick, but thrashed anew, sorely testing Link's grip on the hilt.

Desperate for stability, Link pulled out another dagger and jabbed it in, doubling his grip. Realizing he was onto something, he oriented toward the thing's back and tried to pull out the right-hand dagger, intent on laddering his way to its vulnerables again. The dagger was stuck fast, and Link quickly changed tactics, abandoning that handhold to jerk another dagger from his bandoleer and pulling himself forward before stabbing that one in a little further along. In this way, he quickly left a progression of jutting hilts in his path as he worked toward its sharply sloping back.

At last, he waited for a lull in its intermittent thrashing and skittered down the side, his last dagger finding small resistance in this softer flesh and leaving an ever-widening gash as he dragged it down its posterior. The gore-smeared red blister met him soon enough, and Link grabbed for hold on the still-jutting harpoon as he pulled his remaining metal prongs out all at once. In a small feat of leverage manipulation, Link reared back and jammed in another harpoon, and then yet another in quick succession. The creature tried to fling him off again, and now Link attached his clawshot to that same knot of barnacles he'd used earlier and allowed it to launch him off to the side.

The links of the clawshot clattered outward in a familiar cacophony, and then Link sling-shotted back toward the creature's vulnerable spot with his last harpoon leading the charge. The huge hole he'd pried open with the other harpoons was waiting there for his arrival, and with all the force of his flight, the final one disappeared into its body entirely and gashed a hemorrhaging trail all the way through it. Impaled, it shuddered once, and then fell still.

As the air-bloated corpse listed and crumpled sideways into the water, Link swam around and traveled back up his ladder of dagger hilts until he could sit comfortably on the side of one of its eyes. The shoreline, boardwalk, and what was left of the docks were lined with a huge, roaring crowd that Link only now bothered to notice. "_Hurra_!" shouted some. "_Viva_!" came from others. An odd few even bellowed "_Alé_!" Link had little concentration to spare bothering with them, so focused was he on turning inward to keep strenuous watch for any whisper that might come from that quarter.

"_What's the big deal with them?_" spoke a familiar voice, just when Link had decided to give up. With a slight thrill and a quirking smile, he turned his head slowly to see a painfully weak, transparent ghost of Arrika leaning on his shoulder like a sleepy child.

"Nothing much. I just slew another sea monster is all. I was hoping it might work the same as that demon and all those other giant beasts have, and wonder of wonders—it _did_. Oh, and I'm going to get paid, too."

"_Ah, well, I was wondering what the wake-up call was all about. All that energy came surging into your soul and I couldn't help but pick some up, even if my sword wasn't in on the kill. But… where are we? And did you just say you slew _another_ sea monster? As in, this isn't the first one?_"

"Well, I wasn't exactly sitting around with my thumb up my butt before I met you, ya know—" Link began, ready to try, for almost the first time, to regale someone with a tale of his previous adventures.

"Who are you talking to?" came a high, slightly breathless voice. Link bit his lip and looked down at the waterline to see Leeta's petite head and shoulders peeking from water that was quickly staining with deep purple blood. The fans of her exquisite fins drifted below her like a ghostly train in the gentle current.

"I was just… taking a personal inventory. Ten fingers, ten toes, one head—looks like I came out in one piece."

"Are you sure?" Leeta was giving him a very odd look, one Link was sure he recognized, but that he'd never seen on a zora's face before. "If you really think so, I guess I can just toss this and let it drift out to sea." With a playful splash, she drew up one arm and revealed Link's bow, which had gone flying when his perch on the crane had ended so spectacularly.

"Ah, well, thank you. Though it didn't do me much good this time, I generally tend to swear by my bow. This one was both nice and irreplaceable, so I guess I owe you double thanks."

"Oh, don't mention it." Leeta once again gave him that weird look, and now Link had the strangest sinking feeling. He then realized that the octarock corpse was sinking beneath him, and momentarily dismissed his suspicions.

"Listen, Leeta, I'm going to swim back to the docks and get Tony to negotiate a fee for the bounty on this thing. Considering the fondness of townies for their money, though, I doubt I'll be getting the posted price, and I might have to leave in a hurry. I'll try and come to the water tonight and tell you the plan for the next leg of the trip, but if we have to leave before that, I'll meet you at the place we arranged."

"Uh, right," Leeta gave a hearty nod, and Link couldn't help but wonder. In a day or two, she'd gone from confrontational and intolerant to enthusiastic and cooperative. He'd noticed a little of it before, but now it was impossible to miss. "You know, Link," she paused in her retreat, catching Link's attention, "that was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. It takes four to _ten_ professional zora warriors to slay the sea devils, and most of those are two thirds this size."

"Um… thanks?" Link fielded the compliment with distinct discomfort. Now there was definitely a look in her eyes that made him uncomfortable. He got the distinct feeling that she was eying him like a choice cut of fish fillet. She waved at him one last time before disappearing beneath the water.

"_Well, well, well_." Arrika chimed in, a hint of suggestive taunting in her tone, "_not only have you slain a sea monster, but you've charmed a mermaid. You… you are just the most wonderful partner a girl could wish for_." She alighted upon his shoulder in that weightless, ghostly way of hers and perched like a model in a profile portrait. "_I hereby proclaim you, 'the most interesting contractor of this millennium.' Of course, I was lost or buried for so long that you only have three competitors for that title, but you should still relish it._"

"Dare I ask who the most interesting of last millennium was?" Link ventured as he slipped down into the water. Not satisfied with the effect of ghosting half in and half out of the water, Arrika's phantom floated above it, gliding with one toe on the surface like a feather-light ice-skater.

"_Mad Thomic the Zeetian Dervish,_" she supplied, just when Link thought her silence the final answer. "_He recovered me from the lost shrine of Atkala where I'd been cooling my heels for six __centuries and used my contract and his unusually strong blademaster powers to completely destroy the corrupt remnant of the Zeetian Dynasty. Of course, those places are half a world away, and returned to the dust of the earth before the most recent dark age even began here. He was _really early_ last millennium_." That final comment was tacked on almost as an afterthought, an idle footnote that powerfully underscored the casual manner in which she spoke of hundreds of human lifetimes.

Link continued to swim strongly toward shore. As he plowed along in silence, he found himself in barely-comprehending wonder as he once again contemplated the enigmatic creature he'd been bound to by chance or fate. She was older than time itself, it seemed, and yet she had the look and mannerisms of a child. She spoke of a father and of sisters like any girl might, but embodied an artifact of fell power unlike anything he'd heard outside of legends. When first they'd met, she'd been prepared to treat him with a distant professionalism bordering on disdain, and reacted with ferocity to the implication that she was nothing more than a talking blade. When he'd rescued her from solitude and impressed her with his permissive attitude, she'd transformed into a mischievous force of much more genuine-seeming irreverence.

By the time he'd climbed up the docks, helped by hands reaching out from a throbbing crowd of admiring and amazed Caredan townsfolk, he'd reached no conclusion. Her phantom, seeming to delight in its immaterial nature, slipped from its place hanging around his neck on short, lithe arms and hopped from head to head in the crowd, balancing on the rims of hats or the tips of pointing fingers. As best as he could understand it, either something in the process that had contracted them together or something she herself had seen in him had prompted her to relax untold ages of professional severity and indulge in nearly childish entertainment. And yet, despite all this, there lurked behind that innocent, doll-like exterior an eternal being that might well have gazed upon creation itself for all he knew.

Now, however, there was no time for brooding or second-guessing, as Link suddenly had to devote all of his attention to navigating the storm of back-slaps and handshakes raining in from every quarter of the raucous crowd.

**Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda was standing alone when Ashei finally found her. She'd discovered a quiet window alcove in her large suite at the Hylian Arms Hotel and stared out at the mildly busy dusk street traffic. The establishment usually served nobles attending court functions in the castle that didn't quite rate a room in the royal guest chambers, and so was sumptuously appointed, but the Queen-to-be had no eyes for the luxuries all around her. Completely worked-over by her team of personal attendants, she was resplendent in her formal robe of office, and one could never have divined that she'd been riding and battling earlier that day. Even her expression was a picture of serenity, and only a strange, submerged tension around her eyes told the tale the young general had fully expected to see.

"Your Majesty!" Ashei announced herself before she could be culpable for lurking. In the hours after she'd established what had happened and who was to blame, she'd gone through stages of frustration, anger, and finally, a crushing sympathy. If her small reading of the Princess' personality held any truth at all, the loss of Trooper Wilkis was hitting her harder than anyone. What all this meant was simply that Ashei hadn't a clue what to say now that her search had proved fruitful.

"War Minister General Ashei," the Princess said, distant and cold in a way that Ashei had never seen before, "I would like to take this opportunity to commend you. Not only was your evaluation of the situation on the road correct, but you and your cadre were successful in carrying the day despite my poorly chosen orders. See that the men are rewarded appropriately for the victory. There will be a special commendation for those that repelled the ambush on our carriage train. The unfortunate casualty in particular requires special consideration for excellence in duty."

"Um… yes, Your Majesty!" Ashei saluted. The statement had the ring of official orders, and nothing more was forthcoming. In a crushing moment, Ashei realized that her evaluation had been entirely wrong. She felt slightly dizzied by the staggering betrayal this represented, and turned to march away and do her duty. There was a painful silence as she took the first few steps.

"Ashei!" there was a cough of tears in the desperate-sounding gasp.

The general turned on her heel just in time for a distraught young woman to blunder into her stiff uniform leathers and sob loudly into her chest. Ashei panicked for a moment, looking up and down the hall and finding it shockingly abandoned. Not trusting that fortune to last, she quickly ushered her monarch into the nearest room, which by chance happened to be the suite's private privy. The incense they used to cover the smell such places tended to accumulate couldn't quite dispel the acrid stench, but that was the least of Ashei's troubles as a suddenly terribly young girl wept on her light armor.

No words passed between them for a long moment, but the general clung to her monarch with an older sister's protective forbearance. At length, her weeping and shaking stopped, and she composed herself without standing away from the slightly taller, far more powerfully built woman. Her first words were a sharp end to the uncomfortable silence.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"N-nonsense…" Ashei fumbled for the correct platitudes she might use to extract herself from this situation. She hardly imagined herself the Princess' confidante, and to have witnessed this moment of weakness was a shocking thing to a woman raised from the cradle to venerate the monarchy with staunch discipline. "Experiencing combat enforces a terrible strain on the stoutest of hearts, as does witnessing violent death as closely as you now have. The speed and finality of death in that kind of melee is enough to turn anyone unused to them to tears."

"No… no…" Zelda shook her head slightly and drew back. When she looked up at Ashei, the redness around her eyes could not disguise the shocking coldness that lived within them. "I'm sorry I countermanded your orders. I allowed my preoccupation with my personal agenda to preempt consideration of your much greater experience, but worse, I allowed it to preempt consideration of the lives I gambled so carelessly. And most of all, I'm sorry… because I would do it all again."

"E-excuse me?" Ashei was far out of her depth now. She'd thought the Princess unacceptably cold, and then she'd imagined that a front. Now she saw that it was all just a veneer of shock and distress thinly overlaying an iron foundation of sad, cool resolve.

"I was at first distraught over the loss of Cavalry Trooper Teepo Ernest Wilkis, age sixteen, as I perceived it as a direct consequence of poorly-conceived orders I gave." The Princess' voice had become a cool and calculating drone, and the change was nothing short of astonishing. Besides that, Ashei herself hadn't even known the boy's full name… making her monarch's insight a disturbing revelation of how seriously she'd been taking all this. "I suppressed my immediate emotional response while I considered that hasty conclusion from many different perspectives… and I fear it was a remnant of that which forced me to moisten your jerkin." She sniffed, wiping her eyes with her white glove in a gesture that not even she could make look dignified.

"However, my apology is due to the fact that I have since recognized his death to be a sad necessity. You could probably describe the importance of skirmishes like that to the creation of hardened soldiers and _esprit de corps_ better than I can. Even this tragic casualty is probably going to go a long way toward bringing the other men together. The question I ultimately settled upon in my reasoning this eve was: is the death of a single, barely-trained trooper worth the gain of so much morale capital? I had to weigh many, many variables, but I ultimately could not deny that it was. Thus I could not in complete self-honesty allow myself to regret the decision I made." She paused, and once again fixed Ashei with that cold stare, now grown terribly strained.

"Perhaps… perhaps that is truly where those tears routed from. Today I had my first practical lesson on the subject of trading human lives in a political equation. I mean… in theory I knew my decisions would see to the life or death of thousands of Hylian citizens… but this was all much more instructive than any theory." She choked on another bout of tears, but didn't break down. "_Far_ more instructive. Never again shall I underestimate the terror that is battle, nor the mettle of those than can actually function in such a horrifyingly strenuous situation." She shuddered, and the next look she gave Ashei held a note of awe at the combat-hardened soldier that imagined herself subordinate to a mere noble-born politician.

"Your Majesty…" Ashei felt it her place to say something—anything, "we are soldiers, after all. We subordinate our will to a chain of command, because we trust in the end that we will become a force stronger than each of us acting on our own could ever be, increasing our overall chance of surviving a battle's terror. And at the last, we all entrust our lives to none other than you, because we believe with all our hearts that the path you choose will be what is best for Hyrule. Casualties are a reality of war, that's something every commander must come to accept, but it is our responsibility to ensure that every death buys something of true value in return. There is no one else I would rather having making that decision than you, Your Majesty."

Zelda gasped at this unequivocal compliment, stepped back once, and froze to complete the shocked ensemble. Ashei's cheeks burned, the blush deepening down her neck and threatening to reach her belly before it was done. At length, the young monarch crumbled into a grateful smile and wrung her hands from the inappropriate hug she so desired to bestow on her minister.

"Very well then, Your Majesty?" Ashei asked. She'd be happy to have this experience behind her. Having witnessed a girl younger than herself face the crucible that was trading lives in the pursuit of a greater common good was one thing, but watching a monarch she already adored do such was almost too much for her. She felt at once honored beyond comparison and crushed by a throbbing sympathy, but ultimately merely relieved. She was relieved that it was not _her_ upon whom such a terrifying burden rested.

"Two things," the Princess caught her before she could usher herself out. "I trust that news of this encounter will not grow wings?" She waited for Ashei's strained, serious nod before she continued. "On the other matter, I want you to cooperate with Coorley on constructing an appropriate monument. Trooper Wilkis gave his life for crown and country, and deserves a hero's burial." Ashei nodded again, even more gravely this time, but her monarch caught her one last time. "Make sure the memorial has plenty of spare room. I… I can't help but doubt it will be very long before other heroes will merit joining his company."

There was nothing Ashei could say to that, and so she nodded one last time.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

I really enjoyed this chapter as well. Although it was one of my intentions from the beginning, combining video game genre conventions like magical weak points into my narrative turned out to be, for me, an amusing and rewarding process. It's an opportunity to be tongue-in-cheek, and if it takes the reader out of the narrative, I think it also serves as a dutiful homage to the original material to which this story is now only tenuously connected. Later I would go into great detail trying to render this silliness into an actual plot device. I still wonder if that was a worthwhile use of narration...


	17. Games

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 3: Games**

**Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Link led Epona off of the large, white-sailed merchantman that had carried them through the last stretch of their journey to Careda's largest city. Behind him was the great lake of _Marcioni_, into which all of Careda's great rivers emptied at one time or another, and which formed the hub of a trading empire that reached from the enigmatic northlands of Cyrill by river, to the tropical climes of Tonza and beyond by the coastal ports. By a quirk of its geography and the industry of its people, widely known as the world's best mariners, Careda had become a trade giant that no one else could hope to match. Many said that the only thing which prevented the nation's great wealth from spurring it to world conquest was the fact that the various city states themselves spent so much time pointing their spears at one another. Link, however, had little mind for any of this as he secured his possessions and listened to Tony prattle in his good-natured way.

"So anyway, I'm going to go set us up with a place to stay. You said you wanted to scout for work, so go ahead and sight-see around town or whatever, and we'll meet up at the base of _La__ Cattedrale __de__ Dio_." He pointed over the rising rooftops of the warehouse district toward the distant city proper, where a huge spire could be seen towering over the landscape. Link was taken aback for a moment—the church was the largest structure he'd seen since the dizzying crag of Hyrule Castle had come tumbling down.

"That sounds fine." Link nodded. "I should be able to keep out of trouble for a few hours."

"This, I'd like to see." Tony gave him a grave, reprimanding look, and Link knew exactly why.

After the town magistrate had tried to cheat them of the reward, they'd been forced to flee in the night and ride to another nearby port-town to continue their journey, a large new stock of the magistrate's gilders in tow. This had peeved Link enormously, because he'd expected it from the start, and he'd been _right_, which was always the worst kind of trouble to face. It was exactly the kind of trouble, and fame, he loved to avoid, but the money had seemed a decent risk at the time, and he wouldn't have relished leaving the people there to be terrorized anyway. And… to be honest… he wouldn't have skipped out on a fight with a monster of that size for anything.

Of course, that was hardly the last highlight of their journey. Their renewed boat trip had been interrupted once by moblin pirates, and then later by a huge flock of the local equivalent of kargaroks. Link had repelled both with consummate displays of ice-cold violence, making the sailors around them horribly nervous despite the rescues both incidents represented. In the short time since joining Link's company, Tony had come to suspect the warrior of living under a curse that attracted these inexplicable dangers to him. For his part, Link rested his continued comfort on the fact that, despite everything, he and his notoriety could still vanish imperceptibly into the thousands of foreigners always traipsing through Careda.

"Well… I honestly don't know what you're talking about now," Link shrugged off Tony's condemning stare and dismissed the man's obvious implications. "Anyway, see if you can't hurry. I'd like to at least secure an appointment with Master Britoli before nightfall. There's other stuff I'd rather be doing than cooling my heels in some stinking hive."

"Your opinion of cities has been noted. Do try not to burn the place down before I catch up with you?" Tony stalked off then, leaving Link with his horse.

"_That__ sounds__ like __a__ tall __order, __are __you __sure __you __can __manage_?" Arrika wasted no time before chiming in. She was in what had become her usual place, her intangible form wrapped around his neck from behind as she rode his shoulders and back like a phantom cape. Other than the occasional feeling that he should be hearing a noise in one ear, Link had already gotten used to it.

"_Please,__ don__'__t __try __to __say __you __wouldn__'__t __enjoy __it __if __I__ wound __up __in __enough __trouble __to __warrant __drawing __your __sword __again._" Link smirked as he could hear her grudging sound of agreement in his head.

"_Yes,__ well, __I__'__m__ just __ticked __because __you __won__'__t __tell __me __what __we__'__re __even __doing __here. __I __remember __you __mentioned __something __about __a __gift, __and__ now __we__'__re __trying __to __meet __someone __named __Britoli. __I__'__m__ not __a__ huge __fan __of __surprises,__ you __know_."

"_Which__ just __makes __it __that __much __more __fun __keeping __you __in __suspense_." Link guided Epona off of the crowded docks, threading through lines of livestock and cargo in innumerable barrels and crates. "_Anyway, __what __can __you __tell __me __about __Careda?__ Every __time __I __ask __Tony __about __this __country, __he __tries __to __give __me __a __grand __tour __of __the __famous __architecture __with __words __alone._"

"_I __haven__'__t __even __heard _news _of __Careda__ in __about __a __thousand __years. __Jean __and __the__ rest __of __Ghent __were __in __a__ state __of __constant __low-level __war __with __them __in __that __time, __and __so __I __never __got __a __very __good __impression __of __the __place. __From __the __sound __of __things, __my __Caredan __is __even __more __out __of __date __than __my __Ghentese __and __Hylian __were, __too. __But, __as __for __what __I _can_ tell __you__… __it __is __a __land __of __three __major __divisions_."

"_Yeah,__ I __got __that __impression __from__ Tony. __He __tends __to __say __things __in __three __different __languages __that __all __sound __alike. __I __take __it __you __can __explain __that?_" Link was into the warehouse district now, towering hand-operated cranes and lines of sweating stevedores filling the wide streets. Every corner seemed to be occupied by a rough-and-tumble gang of mean-looking thugs, all of whom took one look at Link's weapons and immediately started searching for softer marks. Clearly, it was a rough neighborhood, even in the daylight. Arrika hesitated pointedly, and then started to narrate quite a tale.

"_Back in the old days, before the dark age that came _before_ the most _recent_ dark age, Careda was one nation. The schism came during that previous dark age, when the wizard responsible for destroying global culture cast a curse on Careda's waters that would slay anyone who tried to cross them. The nation wound up being divided into three parts for two hundred years, until that wizard was overthrown by the people he oppressed. I have only my suspicions, but I think one of my sisters might have been involved as well—the tone of the legends suits her style and abilities. Anyway, by the time communication was restored between the different areas, no one was alive who'd known what it was like when they were one. The language had been corrupted into different varieties that have continued to become more different since then. The three areas are now known as Romali, the land of artisans, which shares this city's name, Portugi, the smallest, where most of the greatest sea-sailors come from, and Iberni, where the great warriors and generals have lived. It's a linguistic mess traveling around here now, I'm sure, especially with all the international trade to complicate things_."

"_Interesting__…_" Link said, noting the small lead on one of the sword maidens Arrika had hinted upon. Something else had caught his hear, too. "_Just__… __how__ many __dark __ages __have __there __been?__ I __have __my __reasons __to __believe __history __has __been __replaying__ itself __for __a __long __time,_" he pondered for a moment the nature of the Triforce legend, "_why __does __everything __keep __crashing?_"

"_Yes,__ well__… __I__'__ll__ tell __you __what_," Arrika suddenly had a much different tone, one stacked with a weight of years that was impossible to truly comprehend, "_If __you __live __long __enough,__ I__'__ll __explain __it __all. __There __is __a__ certain __perspective __I __am __uniquely __qualified __to __give __on __that __particular __subject_."

"_Because __you__'__ve __lived __to __see __so__ many __ages?_" Link guessed, intrigued by this sudden change. He'd obviously hit on something very important, but Arrika was not yet ready to trust him with something that reached so far beyond any scope that truly concerned him.

"_Something __like __that_," was her cryptic reply. "_Oh,__look_!" she changed the subject suddenly, phasing straight through his body to skip phantasmal through the crowd. They emerged into a huge pavilion, and Link's eyes were stung by the immediate explosion of colors, noise, and motion. "_Link__—__it__'__s __a __carnival_!"

"So it is," Link said out loud, watching as she wound from one stall to another. She looked no older than fifteen when she behaved that way, long hair flying behind her and severe, form-fitting dress rippling with the wind that couldn't touch her.

Having nothing better to do and a very excited spirit bending his ear, Link decided to attend the carnival until it was time to meet Tony, especially if the man's fears about how rare work would be were true. He left Epona standing on an unobtrusive street corner secure in the knowledge that any thieves encountering her would soon know the taste of hooves. On the way in, he exchanged a half-gilder for carnival tokens, finding language to be no barrier to the shrewd locals that came out to run the carnival games.

"_Come __on, __Link, __you __just _have _to __play __a__ few __games_," Arrika continued to cajole him. He'd intended to spend the tokens on the local delicacies, but she was quite persistent.

"I don't know," Link muttered, "I'd feel _dishonest_ playing games like these. I have something of an unfair advantage."

"_Please_, unfair?" Arrika teased, "_I know you're good, but don't get too cocky. Besides, these games are all rigged against the players. It would do these crooked penny-pinching shop-keeps some good to face a little shakedown_."

Lacking any interest in arguing with her, Link stepped up to the nearest games-booth. A man was barking for attention, demonstrating the produce of the shop he no-doubt ran in the city as prizes for a simple game of 'knock-over-the-pins-with-the-ball.' By way of visual explanation, he picked up one of the gaily colored balls and pitched it off-handedly at a pyramid-tower of plain wooden pins. The whole lot went tumbling down with a satisfying clattering explosion, the semi-musical noise enough to prove them light and hollow.

Link got in line, and found himself behind a boy of thirteen or fourteen who was flanked by two girls. One could possibly have been his little sister, but the other was clearly somewhat more special, what with the way he blustered and preened for her. All of them were dressed in rather plain clothes that were nonetheless painfully clean, which shouted to Link of a working-class background. In any case, the boy stepped up and produced a token from what could not possibly have been a large supply. He lifted a ball which filled his hand and took exceptionally careful aim. When he let fly, Link could instantly tell it would be a direct hit, and indeed, it was.

When the crumbling tower of pins finished, however, the one that stood in the center-middle of the pyramid was painfully upright and stationary on the distant table. The boy was crestfallen, and the girl he'd been trying to impress gave him a dour look. They started to leave, but Link tapped his shoulder before they could get far, and they looked up to see him palming a ball easily in one of his gauntlets.

Link tossed the ball up once and caught it to get its measure. From its weight, it was likely a rock wrapped in twine and then sewn into cowhide, and he figured he could probably kill someone with it at as much as fifty paces. In his mind's eye, the bottom-middle pin in the newly-built tower became the skull of a moblin, and that's all it took. The rocket he launched probably reached around a hundred and ten miles per hour, and was immediately on target. The stack exploded like a startled flock of birds, and the falling pins rattled noisily a few seconds later when they finally came back to the ground. Afterward, there was still that bottom middle pin standing where it always had.

Only now, to the shrieking anger of the children and several other observers, its top few inches had been blown completely off by Link's zinger, revealing the peg that slid up into it from a compartment in the table below. Link got his prize, a handsome doll form the man's toyshop, and after he reached across the stand to pick the man up by the scruff of his collar in one steel-clad fist, the boy's young crush was allowed to pick out one of her own, earning the chap a kiss on the cheek. By way of ending the matter, Link dropped his doll into the little sister's arms and stepped on to the very next game-booth over. Little did he expect, but he'd grown three small shadows.

Over the course of the next hour, Link exposed a crooked ring toss and a rigged strength-testing game involving a mallet and a bell at the top of a twenty-foot runner track. Besides those, he'd won a prize at every booth he approached, indicating that these were either running fair games or knew better than to try and scam him. Besides his first three shadows, he now had a large crowd of the local children from every conceivable monetary background trailing at his heels in a very loud gathering of excited youths. This was fortunate, for the first boy's younger sister was soon laden with Link's discarded prizes, and when she could carry no more, he was able to distribute others to urchins of his choosing.

A respectful distance behind the crowd of gabbing children was a far smaller crowd of concerned parents, and though Link hardly spared them a glance, they were clearly of two minds about his effect on their kids. They noted his long ears and taciturn nature, pegging him as a foreigner, but Link was hardly alone in that respect considering Romali's nature as a trading hub. They were still watching their children admiring him when he reached the cash games.

Games of skill for adults only, these games had much more impressive prizes, and required coin up front from competitors. The wary clerks at these stations watched Link approach with open concern on their faces, but dared not shrink away with so many eyes on him. In short order, Link had the children and parents all cheering, and drew an ever greater crowd. With astonishing ease, he dominated first the bow shooting gallery, then the crossbow shooting gallery, and finally the axe-throwing range. When he finished a similar treatment on the dart gallery and later just about broke the hand of the man running the shell-game, he'd more or less established himself as the most entertaining thing at the carnival today. His take for that run was a respectable return on his modest wagers, as well as a brand new quiver of finest Caredan leather and a veritable book of coupons that he came to understand would be redeemable for free food and beer.

Seeing as how the next area over was the cooking pavilions, Link decided to put his winnings to good use. Link ordered up copious servings of marinated roast pig and a few steins of beer and found himself a seat at a picnic table. The children noticed that their chosen clown was taking a break, and so scattered back to their parents or into small groups to discuss in very loud voices what they'd seen, at least by Link's best estimation. That was around the time that the small group of locals approached him.

One of them spoke an approximation of Hylian, and was elected by his fellows to be their spokesperson. Link had distributed gifts to all of their children, and with that token of goodwill to start things, it was small work for his book of beer vouchers to make him a dozen new friends. After a whirlwind hour of merry-making, Link plied them for information on the local conditions, and they were only too happy to voice their many complaints, or to run over the latest gossip.

This, in fact, was how Link learned all about the Great Games.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda and her staff finished out her morning ritual at the usual time, and as she helped herself to today's selection of candied breads, she thought with all three cycles. One part of her mind considered the day's required tasks. She was scheduled to spend the afternoon granting audiences to petitioners, with the night being the eve of the gala she'd ordered to lure in the merchant elite. On another cycle she was running a catalog of things she wanted to speak with Link about at her next opportunity, chief among those being the encounter at the bridge, along with her revelations about combat and leadership and her suspicions about the mysterious light that had saved her life. And then, on the third, she was examining herself in minute detail.

This morning, having finally wrestled her guilt about the bridge incident into a manageable ache, she was disappointed to awaken in muddled spirits. She had the strangest feeling, a kind of fuzziness combined with a nagging physical sensation, like she was tipsy from wine and suffering from an itch between her ears at the same time. It said much for the persistence of the unusual feeling that she could not dispel it after her entire morning ritual, even with a whole section of her mind dedicated to the task.

Just then, the guard escort lead by Squire Totten arrived at the door, and her stewards showed them in. The young man was in the rare position of being noble and talented, and so was a commander of the Royal Guard at age eighteen. It occurred to Zelda, as she pulled her long gloves up each arm in preparation to leave, that she would have to knight the young man soon. Just then, her third cycle pulsed, poking mentally at the intangible 'thing' that had been bothering her since she woke up.

Zelda felt a warm sensation run over her whole body, and then the nagging fuzzy itch just stopped. She nearly sighed in relief, and stood to leave. It was as she was gathering her skirts that she noticed the sudden, uncanny hush, and examined the crowd of her servants surrounding her. This time, she gasped, there was just no stopping it.

Every eye in the room was focused on her with rapt attention. The expression common to every face was rapturous delight, love in its purest and least rational form. Within three seconds, half the eyes in the room were moist with tears of joy, and Squire Totten had collapsed to his knees, his hands clutched over his chest and a look of exquisite agony creasing his handsome features. Before Zelda could overcome her own surprise, he'd scrambled across the floor on his knees to take one of her hands in his.

"Your Majesty, I fear I know not how to address you unless it is to say: I love you! Please, if you have any mercy in your heart, you will give me your hand in marriage this instant!"

A choking sound of jealousy rose from every throat in the room, male and female, as though Totten had stolen the very words they would have given to Zelda if only they hadn't been struck dumb by her majesty. That jealousy died when they all saw Zelda's aghast expression, and Totten himself looked like he was ready to weep.

"I—I—" Zelda sputtered for an answer, all three of her mental cycles ground up in confusion.

"Alas!" Totten sprang up, tears streaming down his face. "It is clear that your answer is no! Lamentable day! I cannot bear another moment of this agony! Goodbye cruel world!"

He swept past Zelda and wrenched open the fourth-floor window, leaning out over the stone streets below. Now, however, Zelda had recovered enough to see what was happening, and she jumped over to snatch a hold of his armored harness. He was off balance from his thwarted suicide attempt, and so even the petite princess was able to drag him backward onto her room's carpeting. By the time he hit the floor, Zelda had figured out how to turn off what she'd been unconsciously doing to everyone, and the spell broke at the sound of his clattering landing.

In the aftermath, everyone was dazed, not quite sure what had happened. The men were flustered, the women were flushed and breathless, and it was all Zelda could do to assure them that they'd simply been startled by the way the squire had almost tripped right out the open window. Eyes glazed as that lie replaced the uncomfortable reality in their fizzled memories, and Zelda was safe again.

As she followed her escort to the day's activities, she was still thinking with all three cycles. Now, however, one was working at qualifying that power, another was estimating the range of its uses, and a third was etching out a plan for how it, combined with her other abilities, could make her supreme monarch of the world within her own lifetime. There was nothing to say she would _use_ the plan, but the sudden realization that it was possible meant she couldn't help but lay down its foundations out of pure curiosity. Of course, in the meantime, she would need to test its limits and refine her control.

**Royal Tax Assessor's Offices, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"Thank you, Mr. Goefard, that will be all." Zelda dismissed the latest merchant from the royal presence. He continued to sit with a pale, drawn look on his face, and eventually had to be helped out by a pair of guards.

Back in the anteroom to the Royal Tax Assessor's Office Zelda had commandeered for the day, the last merchant on her list of appointment 'requests' sat nervously, watching yet another of his peers stagger away without any blood left in his face. When the steward called "Jimnal, Riley" in, he was nearly startled out of his shoes, but managed to recover without totally embarrassing himself. He eyed the exit longingly, but two unpleasant-looking armed guards flanked it, and two more were ready to give him a helping hand into the office by the grim looks they sent his way.

Moments later, he was sitting across from the country's monarch in a personal appointment that was so far beyond his station that it literally chilled him to his bones. He didn't actually look up until she coughed politely for his attention, and when he did, he realized at least some portion of what had taken the blood out of his fellows' faces. Specifically, a great mass of blood rushed southward as his guts clenched and his pulse raced.

The Princess was, to rely on understatement, _radiant_. It was literally more than he could take, and Riley quickly found an unobtrusive bit of wood molding to stare at just above and to the right of her head. His eyes saw a blond girl with charming, aquiline features in a plain robe of office, but his brain registered so much more than that. It was really quite unfair to the man, who was happily married, but Zelda was still testing the effects, and had decided it would do to have her guests properly off-guard.

This most recent feature of her powers seemed perhaps the most incredible, and she'd been assessing the breadth of its effects since she'd accidentally reduced the young squire to suicidal devotion. The effect it produced clouded the mind completely as long as the subject was within eyeshot of her. It seemed to have a range limit of about a hundred feet, but she'd found that she could maintain it continually without exertion. While under a mild influence, everyone who saw her was dazzled, and with a bit more, she was certain she could make absolutely anyone fall uncontrollably in love with her. Afterward, they remembered little of the experience, and could be convinced of almost anything to fill in the blank. Still, the example of Totten had shown just how horrifyingly dangerous it was, and she shuddered to think of how human slime like Reanalds might react. Such a man would tend toward rage rather than despair, and the first thing he'd do would _not_ be to commit lover's suicide. Far from it.

Putting those considerations aside, Zelda continued her efforts with Riley. When she felt him properly dazzled, she began to work the man with her voice, weaving a spell around him with words that were nonsense in her own ears, but sweetest honey to her final merchant caller. In time, he happily divulged his closest secrets, and was helped out of the room by a pair of guards at Zelda's final request. The young monarch was left with a mind full of memorized financial figures, and with secret knowledge enough to have each man jailed, or even hung.

The fact was, much as had been evident to such as Malo Jaggleson, the merchant elite of Hyrule had been working under conditions of conspiratory monopoly since the days of Zelda's father. They had been secretly conspiring to set prices, much as they had openly conspired to strangle foreign trade, and thus they had created a situation where they could continue to make money indefinitely without ever having to innovate or expand their enterprises. The stagnating effect this had worked on the economy could not be underestimated, and was the largest obstacle Zelda had to overcome in making Hyrule the world power she knew it could be.

"Your Majesty?" Donald, Zelda's chief steward, poked his head into the room as a gentle reminder that she was on a schedule. Zelda nodded and swept up out of the tax master's office. Next on her agenda was a sit-down with her least favorite noble over tea and a light lunch. Reanalds had wormed his way into her itinerary somehow, probably by bribing one of her junior staff members.

Honestly, it was as though no one actually _checked_ ever again once the appointment made its way into the books. The way her office was run, it wasn't impossible to imagine someone slipping an extra notation in and everyone else just planning around it as though it had always been there. It boggled her mind sometimes that she had absolute power after the goddesses in this country and she was still at the mercy of the clerks that arranged her appointments. Worse, the very real possibility that her closest staff had been compromised by an outsider meant she'd have to have Donald prepare for a _p__urge_.

In the meantime, she had to deal with Reanalds at least this one last time.

**Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"I'm astonished—not a single casualty!" Tony quipped as he shoved through the crowd in front of the _Cattedrale __de__ Dio_ to join up with Link. "It seems you _can_ blend in when the circumstances call for it!"

"Oh, leave me alone!" Link smiled as he slapped Tony on the shoulder and grabbed up Epona's reins to lead her after him. "Just tell me that our inn has a stable, and that we're meeting Britoli sometime soon."

"Our inn _does_ have a stable, as well as a richly appointed bathhouse. All of the mid-range rooms were taken up on account of the festival, so it's a good thing you can pay for the ritzy ones."

"Tony! We're on a budget!"

"Oh relax! I know the owner's son from my university days. We're getting a great deal. Besides, it was either this or sleep in a gutter somewhere—and there's no way you'll ever get a face-to-face with Britoli if you look, _and__ smell_, like you've been sleeping in a gutter."

"Uh…" Link sighed once, happy that he'd just found such a fantastic way to make money. "Whatever. I suppose you'll want me to buy a change of clothes too, right?"

"Very perceptive! The two of us look like bandits right now. The guards wouldn't even let me into the rich quarter until I 'accidentally' dropped a gilder for each of them. New clothes are a necessity. And hey, how about you buy some halfway decent armor while you're at it? I feel like I need a bath just _looking_ at that rusty crap you're wearing."

"What can I say Tony?" Link gave him a theatrical shrug, "I just don't like to stand out. But… I suppose you're right. As long as I'm in the place where you can by anything, I guess I should pick up some… _quality_ equipment. I'll buy whatever we need to get a meeting with Britoli, and _then_ I'll get some new traveler's garb that _functions_. I suppose I should also restock medicine and ammunition—"

A sudden pressure at his side caught Link's attention, and his hand moved even before his brain had finished processing. Suddenly he was holding a tiny arm high in the air and a small child was squealing like a stuck pig, his legs flailing as he kicked impotently at Link's midsection. It was a filthy, penniless urchin, and Link couldn't imagine what he'd just done until he noticed that the child's fist, the one attached to the arm Link's iron grip had captured, was wrapped around a very familiar wallet.

"A cutpurse, huh? Good catch!" Tony complimented Link's reflexes, checking his own wallet automatically.

"_So,__ Link,__ now__ that __you__'__ve __got__ him, __what__ are __you __going__ to __do __with__ him_?" Arrika asked. She seemed inordinately interested, sliding through Link from behind to get a closer look at the shouting, red-faced little boy who'd tried his luck on the wrong mark.

"Tony," Link caught his friend's attention, and Tony turned and choked when he saw the huge, wicked knife in Link's hand. The child had fallen deathly silent as he too got a look at the knife, its evil gleam reflecting in his wide eyes. "Tell this kid that the _next_ one to try for my purse goes home short one finger."

Tony swallowed hard, but translated. The child's expression grew strained, and Link waited for him to nod his comprehension before sheathing his knife, recovering his wallet, and dropping the child. No sooner did his feet touch the ground, than was he out of sight into the alleyways.

"_Brutal. __Heartless. __Mean. __I__ like __it!_" Arrika winked at Link before flipping weightlessly around to drape herself over his shoulders again.

"Ah… poor little snot," Tony muttered as he led Link on again. "Those kids have it rough. The orphanages are all run by the mafia these days. They train the boys to be thieves and the girls to sew… or to 'walk the street.' Then they set quotas. Kid'll get beaten once for being caught, then again for coming home below requirement."

"Yeah, I figured it was something like that. Damn shame." Link pointedly failed to mention the two gilders he'd dropped down the kid's sleeve while he distracted all eyes with the knife.

"Anyway, I can't wait to show you the baths. You just haven't lived until you've relaxed in a genuine Romali Bathhouse. I'm talking heated floors, steam rooms, and only the finest rubbing oils. Mmm, mmm, it's simply _the_ greatest way to relax, _period_."

"Sorry, Tony, but the bath will have to wait." Link smiled. "Tonight, we've got a date with the Great Games." Link's pleased expression didn't budge an iota as Tony turned on him with huge, disbelieving eyes.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"_Reanalds_," Zelda said, making it clear that it was less a greeting and more a warning. The stunningly handsome man rose in perfect etiquette as Zelda stalked briskly into her suite. Impossibly, his eye patch only made him look even more dashing. All around them, staff scrambled to prepare her tea and stood by with reams of reports, ready to make this a _working_ luncheon. Zelda would be damned before this shrew of a man would have the courtesy of her undivided attention.

"Your Majesty, I'm so delighted that you were able to find time for me today. I understand just how busy you are in these exciting times." His words were empty, and Zelda could read into that void a kind of venom.

"Good. Then you'll understand when I request that you make our business brief. I have a great many matters I must attend to and never quite enough time for all of them." It was a struggle not to make every word a new attack on him, but another thing she refused to grant him was the knowledge that he got under her skin.

"Yes, of course, but please, sit. Let us discuss things while we eat."

Eyeing him, but unable to perceive any but the most oblique smugness, Zelda allowed herself to relax somewhat. She sat, and the luncheon got underway. Reanalds began to talk without further prompting, rambling on about this and that without ever saying anything of substance. It was obnoxious, but he did seem to be getting at something, so she couldn't exactly bite his head off like she wanted to.

One of the servants walked over and poured their tea, and Reanalds' rambling trailed off ever so slightly as he watched this with almost unusual interest. Something pricked in Zelda's mind immediately, but the one cycle of thought she spared for divining something from Reanalds' strange speech couldn't pin down what it was. At length, she couldn't be bothered any longer.

"Reanalds, I fear you really must stop all that wool-gathering and simply tell me what it is you want!" Zelda picked up her teacup and saucer and held it daintily. "I've no time to find a soothsayer to divine your proposal from the thin air!" She sipped her tea once. "Honestly, I didn't sit with you today so you could waste my… my…"

Zelda blinked. Then she blinked several more times. All of a sudden, she'd quite forgotten what she was saying. A sort of cottony fuzz prickled up inside her head, and thinking became rather difficult. She felt her aggravated expression ease to a beneficent smile, and then shook her head to re-start her train of thought. Of course, what before had been a hulking, three-engine behemoth of a locomotive was now a tottering toy choo-choo train.

Zelda noticed that she was sitting across from an astoundingly attractive man. Her face flushed and she smiled, nearly giggling as her heart began to thump faster in her chest. She wrung her hands once, and then batted her eyelashes. After a long moment of concentration, she remembered the handsome man's name.

"Lord Reanalds," she began, finding a bit of her hair to play between her fingers, "I really _must_ apologize. What was it that I was saying before?"

"No need for apologies, My Lady," Reanalds had the strangest hungry look in his eyes, and was quite nearly licking his chops. "I believe you were just about to suggest we go for a short constitutional around the hotel. I have some rooms on the floor below, you know. The suite has quite a history. I'm sure you'd be _fascinated_ to hear about it."  
Zelda's smile became brilliant as she recognized that the very handsome man was _taking__ an __interest_ in her. "Why, that sounds lovely!" She shot up out of her seat and nearly tripped in her haste to round up on the man and pull him out the door. She had only taken her first step, however, when she paused. Reanalds had a look of utter horror plastered across his chiseled jowl, and she couldn't imagine why.

After a moment of puzzlement, she followed his gaze to somewhere around her chin, and her hand quested that way by pure reflex. It wasn't until her white glove game away stained with streaming red that she realized her entire chin and throat were drenched in warm, thick fluid that was fountaining from her nose. Her brow arched in confusion.

People were screaming, but it sounded far away. More warm fluid was clogging her pointed ears and overflowing down onto her shoulders. Her vision blurred and stained with red, and her eyes began to stream with thick, bloody tears.

"Dear me!" She said, because she couldn't think of anything better. The sudden words sent a spray of blood flying from her lips. "I seem to be bleeding."

Zelda was overcome by a sudden dizziness, and the soft carpeting rushed up to kiss her goodnight.

**The _Pugiltorium, _Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Link, I talk and I talk, but I just don't think you're hearing me." Tony sounded grave as the two of them were seated in the huge, extremely crowded stands. The Pugiltorioum was a structure as old as the city itself, and it was here that all the venerable combat sports of the Great Games were held. Far below, an arena of sand bore the trampling footprints of a thousand athletes. It was difficult to hear one's own thoughts over the din of the rowdy audience.

"Listen, Tony, I understand." Link continued to fob-off Tony's worried nay-saying. "The athletes that compete in The Games are professionals, and I've never even _seen_ a match before. I get it. You see, that's why we're here now. I'm going to learn how to fight in… whachacallit… pan-crashin' style. Then we'll bet all our money on me, a relative unknown, and make back huge winnings on the long-odds."

"It's _p__ankration_, Link, and you _must_ be _out __of __your __mind_! Pankration is the brutal art—men spend their _entire __lives_ learning it. The masters can defeat several armed opponents with their bare hands! You can't spend one afternoon watching exhibition matches and expect to walk on tomorrow and win! It's INSANE!"

"_I hate to agree with the lilly-liver, but he's right._" Arrika chimed in. "_Pankration dates back to the High Ages. It was designed by men with great knowledge, philosophers and scientists both, to be a cripplingly effective form of unarmed combat. I don't care who you are—a master of the art will kick your ass_."

"_Does all that mean you can give me some pointers_?" Link asked.

"_Unarmed combat is for poor people and latent homosexuals._ _If you persist in this foolishness, you're on your own_."

"_Right, well then shut up_, _the first match is starting_."

As Link watched, Tony narrated the finer points. The huge, well-muscled man entering the ring from one corner was the retired master Dino. The rather less impressive and very nervous-looking fellow coming in from the other side was a plucky student who'd volunteered to help Dino put on a show. They each wore nothing but a rolled loincloth, and Tony explained that even this was just a bow to the changing times. Pankration had originally been fought in the nude. He'd hurried to remark as well that this had made the 'nutcracker punch' a favorite and perfectly legal move.

In fact, the only two rules for the fight were 'no biting' and 'no gouging.' Also, if you killed your opponent, you lost. This was because a death in the ring meant that fighter was too tough to submit, making him the winner by default. A referee with a rather hefty club stood by to enforce those rules, although he was at his ease for this mock-up match. There were two ways to end a match—knock your opponent unconscious with punches or kicks, or by choking him out, or make him submit with a joint-lock or sufficiently agonizing broken bone. The average fighter's career ended in horribly shattered fingers, dislocated limbs, and death. Strangulation and broken necks were terribly common, both because of the ferocity of the fighting, and because many would rather die and win at the cost of his life than be shamed by submission.

As the exhibition wore on, the past-master showed off his chops. Any given punch or kick the student threw quickly found him planted into the sand with a limb in a joint-lock. Dino moved with a fluidity and confidence that practically put his opponent in the sand by itself, and he could find a choke or a submission virtually without effort. He would stop short of actually breaking a limb when he had it cold, and when he mounted the poor fellow on the sand he didn't actually pound his face in the way he easily could have, but it was still an ordeal for the young man. He eventually became so frustrated that he charged, only to be caught by a spinning back-kick to the gut that knocked him clear off his feet and, by the wracking agony it left him in, probably broke some of his ribs. That was the end of the first exhibition.

Link drank it in through his eyes, his muscles twitching involuntarily as the motions programmed into his body directly from his brain. By the end of the third match, he was confident he could take on any amateur and most veterans, but he was also madly in love. He _had_ to know more. He had to know _it__all_.

"Come on," Link jerked Tony up and forced his way back out through the crowds.

"What? It was just getting good!" Tony whined, "Where are we going?"

"I've got to talk to Dino."

**_Pugiltorium_ Locker Rooms, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Sorry boys, I'm not signing anymore autographs," Dino dismissed whoever it was that had opened his door. He was sore, and the fact that such a joke of a show-fight could make him sore was depressing for the aged champion. It was so bad that he didn't notice that the visitors were still around until he turned and came face-to-hair with a young man. Another youth was standing by the door looking nervous. "What's all this then? And, how did you even get back here? The doors are all guarded!"

"Sorry to disturb you, champ," said the shrimpy looking one. He had a south-western accent and the mannerisms of a herald. A closer look at the beefier of the two revealed oddly elongated ears—just like those foreigners were supposed to have. "The fact is, my associate, Mr. Link, was incredibly impressed by your performance earlier, and wanted to ask you a few questions about the Brutal Art. He's also interested in becoming your pupil."

"Eh?" Dino looked over the tough-faced young man, and his expert eye spotted a confidence in his carriage and a weight to his build that spoke of extensive experience with violence. A mercenary, perhaps, or a button-man for the mafia. "Listen, I give lessons on a very exclusive basis. Tell your quiet friend here that he can go learn from the militia reserve trainers or something. Now get out of here, both of you. I've got another exhibition match coming up."

The two of them took a moment to talk in some pig-language or another, Dino didn't understand a word of it. The big one with the ears didn't seem pleased, but they left without further comment. Dino finished preparing for his next match, and then strolled out through the torch-lit underground causeways and back into the arena of the _Pugiltorium_.

The roar of the crowd was music to his ears, and the force of that adulation rejuvenated his tired bones. He looked across the sand to his opponent, another of the students from his rival Giovani's school. Only, his opponent _wasn__'__t_ the boy he'd been expecting. Standing there in his loin-wrap was the beefy kid from earlier, Link, or whatever. He had a regulation sweatband wrapped over his long ears to hide them, and his unruly brown hair bristled out from under it. Nearly naked, the definition of his physique was almost unbelievable, even greater than Dino's own at that age.

He started to turn so he could complain to the referee, but his eyes met Link's, and something passed between them. Suddenly, a fire of competitive pride was lit in his heart. If this puppy wanted it so bad, then by Dio he was going to get it. Dino felt himself smiling almost painfully wide.

The match began, and the two fighters approached in the normal manner, touching bare knuckles once and then backing away to begin sizing up each other's guards. Dino's initial estimation was that the kid was an amateur, and after a few seconds of footwork, he swept in with his best haymaker punch.

What happened next was a mess of confusion and mindless, reflexive action. The first punch missed, and there was a great deal of grappling that happened faster than thoughts could organize. Although he had been fooled completely on an intellectual level, Dino's body still followed all the motions automatically, and he wound up with Link halfway into an arm-bar on the sand. His face felt numb, and he realized it was because he'd been rocked at least twice by punches. His leg was also throbbing, so there must have been a leg-kick or something like that too.

The arm-bar wasn't going anywhere, because the kid was far stronger than he looked, which was saying a lot considering he was cut like a high-period heroic statue. Realizing this, Dino began to get serious. There was some more scrumming about, but Link eventually got away and they stood up again. The crowd was roaring around them, eating it up, and Dino hadn't felt quite so alive in years.

Despite his new commitment to the match, the next round of stand-up fighting was a stalemate. It was mind-boggling, because Link just kept getting better and better at boxing and avoiding take-downs. The longer the match went on, the better he got, and Dino was tiring much faster. Eventually, it was time to take it to the sand again.

Dino the Champion reached deep into his bag of tricks and sent Link to the sand with a leg-sweep-body-throw, following down into a mount, fully ready to punch the little punk's face in. Link reversed, using a move Dino had shown of less than an hour ago like he'd been born knowing it, and they got back to grappling again.

The two of them together were like snakes fighting in a sack, rolling and reversing over and over again in an attempt to find purchase on a limb or the neck and end this thing once and for all. The normal mistakes of an inexperienced opponent were nowhere to be found—Link protected his fingers and ankles from crippling breakage and reversed or countered Dino's every attempt at a submission. As before, the longer they wrestled, the better Link seemed to get at it. What was worse, he was quickly adopting Dino's exact, lifetime-perfected style!_ It __was __like __the __boy __was __sucking __the __knowledge__ right __out __of __him._

Finally, down to his last gasp of strength, Dino noticed an opening. It was not an amateur's opening, to be exploited with impunity, but rather, a one-in-a-thousand thing that Dino's experienced eye picked up and latched onto for dear life. There was twirling and reversing, a few thrown punches and elbows from the clasp, and then the young man had Dino's huge bicep wrapped around his carotid artery. It was a textbook rear-naked choke, and Link had about ten seconds of consciousness left. He didn't submit, exactly as Dino wouldn't have submitted, and he was ultimately fortunate that he faced the champ and not some ham-fisted fellow who would clench too tight and strangle or snap the neck. The match was called, and by the time Link was coughing back to life, his friend from the locker room had run across the arena to check on him.

"You killed him!" the shrimp shouted, "I told him it was suicide, but I didn't think you'd kill him! Ah, it's _all __my __fault_!"

"Oh calm down, nancy-boy," Dino coughed, struggling to reclaim his own wind. "He'll live. I'll have the medico's drag him to my locker room, and you'd better be there to translate."

"Translate?" the shrimp seemed confused.

"Yes, translate. I don't speak this kid's pig-language, and he'll need quite a few pointers if I'm going to make him the greatest fighter this arena has ever seen."

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"How is she?" Ashei inquired tensely as Auru stepped out of the Princess's bedroom. The look on his face was grim but not devastated, and so she held out hope, but the entire situation ground at her nerves mercilessly.

"She's responding well to blue medicine, but she will not awaken. The doctors say she is comatose. She could be fine by tomorrow, or she could sleep until she dies of old age."

Ashei watched Auru's expression as he said this, and her own deepened into a boiling mask of rage. Poison. Someone had poisoned her. The greatest thing to happen to this country in two hundred years at least, and now they didn't know if she'd even wake up again. What made it all worse was that it had happened on her watch. This was nothing less than an attack on Hyrule, an attempt to decapitate the nation, and she'd allowed it to happen.

The hallway was suffused with armed men. After the assassination attempt, Ashei's best soldiers had clamped down on the hotel like an iron fist closing around the hilt of a sword. All the other tenants had been evicted, and the street out front had been cleared of all traffic, nothing so big as a stray cat passing the pickets without being strenuously examined by _very__ unhappy_ men with _big_ weapons. Of course, it was all too late.

"How goes the investigation?" Auru sought to satisfy his own curiosity, the strain making his aged features crease even further than ever before.

"It leads in all directions to dead ends," Ashei nearly spat. "We traced the poison immediately to the tea, and alchemists are working to discover what it could have been. We accounted for every step in the tea's preparation where poison might have been introduced, but every suspect that turned up was clean—with the exception of the one who is dead."

"Dead?"

"Robert Cale fled the city in the confusion following the Princess's collapse. My men found him in the home of his younger sister. Apparently he murdered her and all of her children and then cut his own throat. There was no deathbed confession, but we found no evidence of outside involvement."

"So there is nothing then," Auru sounded exhausted. It was like his whole life had been dedicated to seeing this girl-child into her radiant future and was now worthless without that prospect.

"Nothing I can call a tribunal over," Ashei grimaced violently, nearly snarling. "Still, I find it _very__ interesting_ that the apparently mad Mr. Cale had been putting aside money to purchase his sister's homestead from its current landlord, one Earl of Ordonia Reanalds Senior."

"Do you have any proof?" Auru snapped urgently, when the implications hit him at least as hard as they must have hit her.

"Do you think I'd be standing here if I had any proof? NO! I'd be marching that pig to the headsman's block! I haven't got a damn thing but my suspicions and some sketchy deaths."

"Unfortunate." Auru brooded for a moment. "I will speak with the spymaster about having him surveiled from now on. Much more important than that, however, must be our efforts to keep this incident relatively secret."

"More important?" Ashei nearly choked on the idea. "_How_-?"

"Because Her Majesty never appointed an heir, and there is no clear successor to the throne—_that__'__s_ how. If it becomes widely known that she is incapacitated indefinitely, it will mean nothing short of civil war."

Ashei almost protested again, but realized the truth of his warning all too suddenly. It was a sobering thought.

"What are we going to do?"

"We're going to popularize the story that Her Majesty is recovering steadily, and then we're going to pray that she actually _does_. All of the organs of government can run perfectly well without her—they did during the regency after all. However, just because its _true_ doesn't mean anyone will _believe_ it. A power vacuum now would be the end for the country, so we must make certain that people believe Her Majesty is no more than temporarily under the weather."

"This… is a disaster."

"Yes. And it's all in the hands of the Goddesses now."

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

Have I mentioned that I'm highly entertained by mixed martial arts? Also, I hate carnivals. But I enjoy renaissance fairs. If you hadn't noticed yet, struggling for ideas, I just began raiding my own interests for plot devices. The result is a story that barely moves forward at all over the course of 15,000 words. That's not to say that it isn't interesting, but this marks the point where writing this story began to become extremely boring for me. As proof, around this is when it began to regularly take me 4-6 months to complete a chapter, even though writing a 15-20 thousand word chapter only takes about five or six afternoons or roughly twenty five hours.


	18. Enemies

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 4: Enemies**

**Lake Marcioni Dockyards, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Leeta waited just under the surface of the water of Lake Marcioni and felt the still darkness around her. Link had promised that he would come to meet up with her again on the night of his first day in town, and she believed him. She'd spent the day searching for her people, a fruitless endeavor that had left her nerves wracked. Something was foul in the waters of Romali, and it wasn't the waste from the city.

There was a noise in the water then, a distinctive clicking that the young woman recognized as the signal Link had arranged. She was darting through the water the next instant, weaving between the keels of merchant ships and around the sturdy sunken pillars of the magnificently engineered Caredan wharf. She couldn't really see much of anything, but the water was like an extension of her skin, and she could feel her way past obstacles. In seconds, she found the source of noise—Link was scraping a serrated knife against a rusted metal brace—and emerged from the water in a lonesome corner of the still-bustling docks.

"Link?" she was exhilarated to be in friendly company again. Still, what she found was little more than a run-down shell of a man. "Wow, you don't look well. Did you lose a fight?"

"I lost several, in fact. But I gained a ton of skill for every bruise. I'd say that by this time tomorrow, all of my money problems will be over. I'm now a certified master of Careda's Brutal Art."

"Oh, you're talking about one of the games the humans are always bragging about? Well… congratulations, I suppose." He still looked like he'd been put through a meat grinder. "I hope it was worth it."

"Meh, I probably look worse than I feel. This isn't the first time I've had to master an ancient martial art in a few hours. Anyway, what about you? Did you find the colony your people have in this area?"

Leeta was silent for a moment, perhaps longer than she meant to be, because he seemed to read the worst into her silence. It would have been a problem, except that 'the worst' were _exactly_ the circumstances she faced.

"I couldn't find anyone. I did come across a sunken cavern that shows signs of recent occupation, but there was no one there." She paused, weighing her next words carefully. "Link… I'm scared. What if whatever got me and my companions got the zoras around here, too?"

"Now-now, I'm sure…" _he_ paused this time, and then reversed his tone. "Actually, that's frighteningly possible." He grimaced, looking pensive for several long moments. There seemed to be some conflict raging behind his eyes. "Leeta, I don't know how to say this, but I think the time has come for you to think about going back home to the ocean."

"What?"

"I mean, I'm going to continue to search for these other zoras, but I honestly can't think of any way I can protect you here. I can't spend all day loitering about the docks, and even if I could, I won't be staying here for very long. I… the thing is… my path after Romali is uncertain, but I really can't see it going back toward the ocean _or_ on toward Hyrule."

"Link?" Leeta felt something warm and soft in her chest start to stiffen and crack.

"Please don't look at me like that," Link said, wilting as he was forced to face exactly the kind of reaction he'd feared. "I can pay for a human ship going that way to watch out for you. It's your safest option."

"What you mean to say is: 'It's my safest option that _doesn__'__t_ inconvenience _you_!'" The words jumped from Leeta's lips in a bitter condemnation that took even her by surprise. Link actually rolled his eyes.

"Do you not understand that this is going to be life-threatening?" he snapped right back at her. "Being near me is taking your life into your own hands! Worse, it's putting the burden of your safety directly on my shoulders! Your safest option _period_ is to just go home!"

When he was done shout-whispering at her, he looked around to be sure he hadn't attracted any attention. Then he waited patiently to give Leeta a chance to recognize the selfishness of what she was trying to do to him. Trying to manipulate him might not have been the objective of her actions, but it was the obvious by-product, and it was all motivated not by her fear of danger, but by her shameless desire to stick around him. Leeta did realize all of this, and so she said the truth for once.

"I would rather take my chances here with you. Please?" She gave him her best puppy-dog eyes, making the manipulation brazen and fully-intentional now. Link sighed.

"I figured you would say that. That's why I brought you these." Link threw a tied bundle onto the docks at his feet. It was some kind of clothing. "The only way you're staying with me is if I can keep an eye on you. I can't stay by the water, so _you__'__re_ taking an expedition inland."

"Are you out of your mind, or did you just take too many blows to the head?" Leeta set her jaw in an expression of stubborn self-confidence that Link had come to know by heart.

"Listen." Link flipped out a knife and opened the bundle, lifting up a long, soft-looking silk robe. "Either you do things my way, or you're going west on the next ship out of this port. I put some thought into this, and I think it will work out just fine."

"Alright then, explain to me how this could possibly work, and I might consider it. _Maybe_." Link grated his teeth. It took some kind of character to beg him to stay and then turn around and be difficult about the terms.

"This is a nun's habit. If you wear one of these, no one will look too closely at you. All we have to do is tie back your frills and it will fit. The headpiece and hood together will totally cover your fin and face, and it's designed not to show any skin, so your scales won't be peeking out."

"_Okay_," Leeta blushed pinkish, but muscled past all the shocking things Link had just said—he couldn't know how personal he was getting when he spoke about the fin on the back of her head and her extremely long, rainbow-reflective frills. "What happens when I start to dry out?"

"It only has to last until you get to our hotel. Even if it didn't though, you zoras can stay hydrated just fine by drinking water. My bud Ralis hung out in a human village, _bedridden_, for days on nothing but spring water. I know your last foray onto land was unpleasant, but drying out is the exception, not the rule."

"You… know a Hylian zora named Ralis?" She was totally shocked, but Link could hardly see her on the midnight water, and her horrified expression totally passed him by.

"Yeah, we got to know each other pretty well a few months back. He's like a little brother to me, in a way. He's where I learned about zoras. Why?"

"Nothing! I just meant… uh… I can't believe you were that close with another zora, though I guess it makes sense. Were… you really good friends?"

"It was a crazy time," Link said, distracted as he unpacked the rest of her disguise. "We helped each other, and I guess I made a lasting impression on him. Heh, get this: he said when he got married someday, he'd want me to be the best man! Imagine, thinking about marriage at his age. But… I guess when you're a prince, things like that are a lot more pressing."

"He's the _Hylian__ Prince_?" Leeta half-choked the whisper.

"Um, are you okay?" Link finally looked up again, finding Leeta mostly submerged. "We really don't have all night, so you need to either start drying off, or start planning your trip back to the ocean."

"I'm coming," she said, and leaped out of the water with barely a splash. Her glittering, soft, aqua-marine scales shed the water quickly, and she hunkered down next to Link as she started to wrap the frills at her wrists, ankle, and back around her body.

"Do you need a hand with that?" Link said, once again glancing around, wary of prying eyes. "Looks like it could take a while."

"I am usually attended by a fin-bearer when I leave the water… a _female_ fin-bearer." Link stared at her blankly. Obviously he wasn't going to take the hint. "These 'frills' of mine are a mark of royalty. Only potential queens develop them." She blushed a brilliant shade of pink under her light-blue scales. "My _husband_ is the only _man_ allowed to handle them."

Link blinked a few times. Only girl zoras of the nobility grow them. The only man allowed to touch them was her husband. _Right_.

"Ahhhh…." Link understood at last, "I'm just going to… keep a lookout." He managed not to look more than slightly flustered as he retreated. He tried not to think about the way he'd just offered to feel-up a young teenager of a different species.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

The Princess' bedchamber was as quiet as a grave. The doctors had finished their daily examination and applied their mystical medications, and so their quietly desperate auras had departed. All that remained were the four heavily armed, stiff-faced guards that lined the room's walls. No one was taking any chances on an assassin sneaking in to finish what the poison had begun, but that didn't make the guards feel any less like intruders. The sad air that surrounded the sleeping beauty seemed to belong to some grand fairytale, not as real as life and right in their faces. And in the end, their presence was little barrier to the only person who wanted to see her just then.

There was a gentle sound, soft and drifting as though it carried from some great distance. The sound crept up, growing slowly louder, and soon wrought changes upon the Princess' quiet repose. The guards' eyes glazed over all at once, and they stood to attention seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and never even realizing that they'd been befuddled. The door was sealed with a subtle spell that would repel anyone from disturbing the room, but leave the impression that everything was fine anyway. Only then did a glowing ring appear on the thick, soft carpeting. Only then did the indistinct sound transform into the soothing notes of a sort of flute playing upon the air. Moments later, the Traveler stood in Zelda's bedchamber, effectively alone.

Silently, slowly, she stored away her mystic instrument and drew up a chair next to Zelda's bed. She looked upon the young woman, just a child really, and her eyes misted slightly. The unnatural mixture of incredible age and preserved youth that defined her appearance had withered slightly more toward age, but it could simply have been the air of heartbreak she exuded influencing an unchanged, timeless visage. Once again moving slowly, oh so deliberately, she drew up her left hand, clad in its elbow-length glove, and set it over the Princess'.

"Ah, but the Goddesses are never gentle with their tools, are they?" It was clear that she was speaking out loud for no one's benefit but her own. Her eyes swam with memories as well as the beginnings of tears that could never come. "They need you to be super-human, so that is what they make you. They never bother for a moment with how much one's life expectancy is truncated by the changes they've wrought. No thought for the simple joys and bittersweet pains that will never come because They Need You for their tasks. No mercy for their chosen ones."

She spent a moment to collect her thoughts, and it only just seemed to occur to her that she'd been talking to herself. She shook her head, trying to ward away the creeping madness of a history of isolation. Then she got back to the task she'd come here for.

"Enough of an old woman's rambling. I must speak with you, sweet one. Arise." She waved her right hand over Zelda's body with a beckoning motion. Her body didn't budge, but quite suddenly, a translucent phantom bearing her exact features in blurred, silver, naked outline sat up and opened its eyes. "Can you hear me?"

"M'head hurts…" the phantom mumbled. "But… yes." She seemed to gain coherence, and her phantasmal body solidified until a pale and unclothed clone of Zelda was sitting on her body's lap. "What…?"

"You've had a bad turn dear, and you're hallucinating. When you wake up, you won't even remember this happened." The Traveler's matter-of-fact tone wouldn't have mollified a child, but some power in her words made Zelda's phantom calm down anyway. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer."

"Okay," Zelda's phantom nodded. The Traveler shot off her first question without a moment's hesitation.

"What has the Triforce of Wisdom done to you? What powers has it granted you—how have you been changed by it?"

"At first," Zelda began in a conversational tone, "It was merely a strange affinity for light magic that I had never possessed before. Now and then after the abduction by Zant, I just seemed to _know_ things."

"The first layer," the Traveler nodded, "That's usually all w—" she choked, "all the Vessels of Wisdom ever experience. A bit of obscure magic and knowing _exactly_ where to apply it to bring about more change than all the swords and spell craft of all the Gods, Divos, and mortals combined. What else?"

"My mind began to change a few months ago. It divided into three… 'chambers'… and just started to work so quickly. I remember everything, I can read an entire page by glancing at it, do math instantly… it's often a little overwhelming."

"The second layer," the Traveler nodded again. "Rare, but sometimes necessary when The War spills past the borders of Hyrule. Continue."

"I can influence people just by talking to them. Change their minds, tell them what they want to hear, charm them perfectly."

"The third and final layer, completing the trinity of wisdom." The Traveler frowned this time, looking worried. "They really are gearing you up for something grandiose, aren't they? Poor child."

"And then I developed something more the other day," Zelda's phantom went on like the Traveler had never spoken, "some strange ability to dominate minds with an overpowering glamour. It is nothing short of frightening… what I can do to people now."

"What?" the Traveler looked like someone had just slapped her in the face. "Another power? But… but… that breaks the rule of threes! It's impossible… I don't understand." Zelda's phantom was unperturbed by the older woman's ramblings. "What in the world is going on?"

"I've had some thoughts about that," Zelda's phantom failed to recognize the rhetorical nature of the question, "and it seems to me that I've been poisoned somehow. I just haven't been able to—"

"Quiet!" Zelda's phantom shut up. "Tell me, what was the first thing that occurred to you when you realized this last power. I mean the very first thing—it's vital that you recall exactly that."

"Oh, that's easy." Zelda's phantom almost chuckled. "I realized pretty much right away that I could take over the world. I had already devised two different general outlines for world domination by the time I drank that tea. Really, once you can ensure with certainty that all of your servitors will be completely loyal, everything just falls neatly into place. I'd go so far as to say, it might be irresponsible for me _**not**_ to take control of everything—"

"Enough!" the Traveler sighed with feeling, then sat back in her chair, pensive. Her eyes once again swam with lightning-fast thoughts. "Can that truly be the will of the Goddesses? Have they groomed a new conqueror?"

"Conqueror?" Zelda's phantom once again misconstrued the Traveler's penchant for thinking out-loud. "Well, only _one_ of my plans actually includes military conquest and oppression. The other is something new… I may be the first person ever to consider it. Essentially it boils down to a system of alliances and mutually-beneficial economic conglomerations. Hyrule would set the standard which an envious world would emulate—or become assimilated into by sheer overpowering cultural diffusion. But really, I could still go either way. Both methods contain opportunities for wondrous intellectual challenges and brand new frontiers in philosophy and political theory."

"Remarkable… they really have altered you into something incredible." The Traveler was staring at the beautiful young woman with a bemused expression. "One simply wonders how much of your humanity was sacrificed in the process."

"Huh…?" Zelda's phantom fell out of its pleased reverie for a moment, so deeply did that statement affect her. "Wh… whu?" She was unable to form a real statement without the Traveler's questions, but there was an unusual air of desperation in her stifled mumbling.

"Of course, you wouldn't know a thing about it, would you?" The tired old sage leaned forward and placed both hands over Zelda's left palm. "With the current understanding of medicine and magic both, you wouldn't have an inkling." She grew distant for a moment, and when she spoke again, she was talking to herself once more.

"It's the farthest thing from fair—what the Goddesses will do to you. They never ask permission before they start to alter us on a fundamental level—the level that makes us humans as opposed to animals or immortals. I suppose I can understand it too—they gave us life, and so it is ultimately theirs to do with as they please. So what if the sharpening of one's mental acuity will never end, or even slow? So what if the ongoing expansion of consciousness eventually drives the occasional chosen one insane? What does it matter if the spoken geas eventually becomes so powerful it can't be turned off? As long as the tool fulfills its purpose, the side-effects of inflicting divine power on mortals can be ignored, right?"

She smiled bitterly. Memories danced across her expression… unpleasant memories.

"One has only to pay attention to spot it, you know. Already the delicate balance of magic and… _alteration_ in your brain has lead to disaster. The tiniest perturbation in the divine chemistry going on in your head has brought you to the brink of death. Pray that you never suffer a sharp blow to the skull. I've seen what _that_can do to one who's been enhanced to the second layer, and 'concussion' doesn't _begin_ to describe it."

And now the Traveler revealed the most rueful smile of all. Her heartache was obvious, and once again begged for tears that wouldn't come.

"But I'll leave you now to discover that on your own. It won't be long now… not long at all before you realize the cruelest change of all. When the Golden Power is in you, you can't endure as a human. You're fate, it seems, is to wind up the least human of us all."

"Nuh…" Zelda's phantom looked terrified, and the Traveler seemed to snap out of another episode of mild insanity.

"Sleep now," she waved her hand at the phantom, and its face eased into a soothing slumber as it settled slowly backward into Zelda's body. "If you're being affected this way, I can only _imagine_ what's happening to the Hero. And… I can't _even_ imagine what's happening to Power's Vessel. A _fourth_ layer? Even the _second_ causes insanity… what can the Goddesses be _planning_?"

She continued to mumble to herself until it was time for her to once again play a magic tune upon her enchanted, crystal-blue, oval flute. Once she had faded into the streaming eternity of time, the guards snapped obliviously out of their reveries, and Zelda slept on, the 'hallucination' already fading from memory.

**_Il__ Albergo __del__ Sole,_Romali,The Confederation of Careda**

The room Tony had secured for them was indeed quite luxurious, and Link felt better about all the seed-money he'd had to drop in order to secure the final reservation. The room was big, had a pair of soft-looking beds, deep carpets, and a private lavatory with a tiled floor. This meant that, not only did they have a private place to plan their upcoming capers, but Leeta had a place where she could drench her scales without damaging any upholstery. She complained about being confined to the room, oh yes she complained, but Link simply reminded her of her options and threatened to chain her to a bedpost if she tried to sneak out, with or without her disguise on.

The disguise had actually worked perfectly, especially once he explained that the nun was Tony's sister and thus chaperoned. That didn't convince anyone, but it gave them a perfectly reasonable explanation so that the hotel staff could look the other way with easy consciences. However, by the time all this was done with, it was past midnight, and Link felt like he'd been beaten with sticks, to say nothing of what he _smelled_ like. Tony wouldn't have it, and so they paid premium to get an off-hours admittance to the bathhouse. Leeta had wanted to join them, but Tony had almost choked on his tongue at the idea of parading himself naked in front of a juvenile girl, no matter what her species, and Link didn't feel like dealing with the potential for comedic hijinks. He explained to Leeta that her whole life had been a bath, and then locked her into the room over loud and petulant protests.

The bath was a joy. The low brick outbuilding behind the hotel used water over hot rocks to produce copious steam and had a hot-air ventilation system that ran under the tiles to keep those permanently warm. The same furnace that heated the floor kept the first tiled pool almost abrasively hot, and the pool in the next room was unheated, making for a quick and brisk way to cool off again. Link came out feeling like a new man, even though he declined the massage and oil-rub on account of not wanting to get too many people out of bed. Tony still managed to exact a promise that he would indulge in both before his business in Romali was over.

That night, Link got one bed on account of the fact that he was paying for all of it, and Tony flipped a gilder against Leeta for the other. He lost, and no amount of complaining about how a girl used to sleeping in seaweed shouldn't even _want_ a bed could keep him off of the floor.

The next day dawned bright and early, because there was a huge amount to be done before the Great Games tournament began that night.

**_Café__ Alfonso_ at Market Square, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"How do I look?" Link asked, as he kicked back at one of the outdoor café tables and lay his wrapped and packaged sword across his lap. The tailors had done their work beautifully, and he now wore a red frock coat with sleeves gathered at the shoulders over a buttoned navy blue silk shirt and britches. Clean leather shoes and a wide-brimmed hat with a long feather completed the very definition of foppish style.

"You could attend a party at the _Castello_ tonight without getting a single odd look," Tony assured him, finally relaxed again as he was clothed in similar style… if with a somewhat more modest hat.

"Well, tonight I've already got plans. What I'm interested in is what we're doing after lunch." The implication was pointed, and Tony held up a reassuring hand, looking smug as can be.

"Yes, and it just so happens that I managed to get us an appointment with Britoli for the second hour after noon. We can have a leisurely meal and be across town to his workshop in no time. I figure we'll have a good idea of just how much money we need to rake in tonight well before sundown."

"Great!" Link smiled and relaxed even further. "Once that's lined up, I can get rid of these ridiculous clothes and track down something a bit more functional. I'll collect funds and search for the zoras while I wait for Britoli to finish the… item…" he looked incongruously conspiratorial considering there was no one around to hear him, "and with any luck, I'll be done and back on the road inside of two weeks."

"Considering who I'm talking to, I really can't imagine it'll be that easy," Tony said, but Link's attention was already elsewhere, almost certainly practicing pankration in his head. "Still, we've got more errands than just that to run."

"What are you on about now?" Link came back from his fantasy with reluctance.

"We still need to stop by the bank today," Tony reminded him. "You can't just walk into the _Pugiltorium_ and drop several hundred gilders on the table. These things need to be handled with a certain refined delicacy. We'll deposit your gold at Romali's First National. They can also change your rupees to something we can use around here. That's the way wealthy people handle money. Anyone in the city will accept your marker if it's cosigned by the First National Bank."

Link had, once again, stopped paying attention. Tony decided to save his breath and just enjoy his lunch.

**Five Tables Away**

Lady Camilla Batista, vibrantly beautiful matriarch of the Las Aguas Batistas, chewed fiercely upon her handkerchief and turned purple, all to keep from screaming out in rage. Right before her eyes was the man that had ruined it all, the man that had humiliated her in front of her sisters and threatened everything she'd been working for since she'd first been inducted into her coven. It was that damnable long-eared foreign cutthroat, the one who had crashed her ritual, the most important _Mujerrouge_ ritual to happen this year. Worse, he seemed to be prospering when he should be writhing in agony for his crimes against her.

"Claudio!" she managed to summon her manservant through clenched teeth, the handkerchief grinding to torn threads in her jaw. He appeared promptly and discreetly at her shoulder.

"Sí, Senora?" The bodyguard and all-purpose lackey was six and a half feet tall and built like a statue. He was dressed in the south-western style, a lace-heavy jacket over a colorful shirt with embroidered black trousers. His regalia matched his mistress's red and black color scheme.

"That man, see that he is followed. I have dire plans for him, and we must be able to establish his whereabouts when the time comes. Is this understood?"

"It will be done, my lady," Claudio vanished as smoothly as he'd appeared, moving away through the various other servants and waiters that crowded the café.

Camilla twisted her barely-suppressed rage into a grim satisfaction as the plan to bring down this upstart formed in her mind. He'd seriously crimped her itinerary when he stole away that essential ingredient—the fish-princess. With him here, she finally had a lead on recovering that whelp and perhaps completing her grand scheme after all. As it was, she had huge pens full of fish-men she couldn't do a damn thing with.

He and his man-servant stood to leave, and a close watch revealed the poorly-dressed bravo that swaggered discreetly after them. Soon enough, he'd be at her mercy. He would give up the princess, she had ways of ensuring that, and then he would face a fate far worse than death. The thought was enough to bring a thrill of delight, and she had to strain against the urge to change that lurked inside her bestial second self. Revenge… sweet revenge was coming.

**The Workshop of Britoli the Great, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Alphonse Britoli's workshop was vastly different than anything Link could have anticipated. For one thing, it was less a house than it was a gigantic complex of interconnecting buildings that took up an entire block of the city's craftsman's quarter. As they approached, Tony explained that a man of Britoli's unmatched talents was a huge asset to his guild, the Weapon smiths and Armorers Guild, and as a result, had an enormous financial backing and corresponding responsibility. His complex of workshops was responsible for cranking out all of the highest-quality equipment the guild sold, as well as for the training of all the guild's brightest hopefuls. Smaller operators in this city and others took care of catering to the lower price-ranges, but production of all the top-tier equipment was concentrated right here. The guild ensured that Britoli had no rivals—everyone even close to his skill level worked in his same complex, cooperating in keeping prices high.

Tony did all the talking, and they were quickly past the apprentices that managed the workshop's customer entrance. They were guided past huge rooms of blasting heat, each packed with arrayed metal-working tools on neatly organized racks and dozens of stacks of metal in various stages of becoming weapons or armor. Men of varying ages, all blackened by soot and zinc oxide dust, worked in closely-knit teams around anvils and crucibles. The clattering and clanging of hammer on metal was almost symphonic.

At length they were lead from the furnaces and into the detailing rooms, where bright lamps gave men with an almost ridiculous variety of awls and rasps the illumination they needed for applying extremely delicate filigree to the products. The rooms were almost library-quiet, just the sound of brushing and polishing, etching and shaping to break the starkly-lit stillness.

Finally, they came to the dormitories serving the apprentices and masters, of which the largest portion was the manse maintained for Britoli himself. They were led to a delightfully appointed antechamber and told to wait, and within ten minutes, they were ushered into an even more delightfully appointed sitting room. Link stepped in, and had to suppress the urge to look in every direction at once. Literally every inch of every wall was completely coated in rack upon rack of artfully graceful weaponry. The collection was staggering in its breadth and variety, weapons of design origin Link could only guess at interspersed with classics from local climes. There were even some exotic weapons he could, at first, not even conceive of how to implement. His eyes very much wanted to linger on these rare specimens, but his attention was demanded by the somewhat elderly but barrel-chested and powerfully muscled man sitting in front of the fireplace in a luxurious leather chair.

"Greetings," the man said, in mildly-accented Hylian, surprising Link. He wound up examining the man more closely as Tony made the obligatory introductions. Britoli had an inscrutable expression, and was focused on Link while Tony spoke. When Tony finished, Link realized he'd managed to read absolutely nothing from the man's strenuously serious manner.

"So, _Signore_ Link, I understand you have an item of rare and exquisite beauty?" Britoli began, actually cutting off Link's own attempt to begin negotiations. The question caught him off guard—how the hell did he know about Arrika's sword already?

"Well… you certainly are well informed. Just how did you know about it before I even mentioned it?" This question seemed to stump him for a moment, and he looked from Tony, to Link, and back again.

"I fear there has been some miscommunication here." One of Britoli's gloved hands idly twirled his thick grey mustache. "Your man made many inquiries toward establishing this meeting, which were, of course, flatly rejected. You are a nothing, and I do no personal work for nothings. However, at the last your man made a claim that I have found myself ever incapable of ignoring. He said you bore an artifact—an item of craft from a bygone era, incomparable to any modern work, even my own."

"_I begin to understand where this is going_," Arrika added unexpectedly. "_Link, you dog. You're going to have this hack produce an accessory for my sword, aren't you? How sweet! Misguided and unoriginal, but sweet_!"

"Err, well, is that how it went?" Link struggled to spare enough attention from Arrika's comment to glare unpleasantly at a rather chagrined Tony. "Since you've been informed already, I suppose there's no point in subterfuge. The sword is right here." He patted at it where it was slung across his hips on bundled cord. "I'm interested in acquiring a scabbard to match its quality, and I've heard this establishment is the only hope I have short of traveling back in time to meet the blade's maker."

"That remains to be seen," Britoli said, irate. "Now, if you'll be so kind as to stop wasting my time and present to me this 'artifact?'"

"_He's about to eat his words_," Arrika could not possibly have sounded more smug. "_A scabbard huh? It has been a few centuries since the last one of any quality crumbled to dust. My sword goes through them like you wouldn't imagine, you know. The blade just slices right through them without discrimination for gaudy accoutrements._"

"Prepare to bite your tongue," Link said, trying to ignore Arrika's sniping. He had half a mind to just sew together some oiled cowhide, the way she was going on. Of course, after all he'd gone through to get this far, he had to at least try to obtain a matched quality scabbard. Without further delay, he slipped off the binding and held the sword horizontal before his skeptical audience, allowing the canvas to slip away slowly.

On this rather dramatic occasion, Arrika's sword did not disappoint. The room was lit by chandeliers designed to best display Britoli's wall-coating collection, and now their light was drunk in by the silvery steel of the ancient item, transformed in some indescribable manner, and then released again like the sword maintained its own independent glow. The gems on the hilt glittered like the eyes of a goddess, twisting with their impossible internal whirlpools of white-silver mist. Even Link, who'd seen the effect many times, felt his breath flee with fresh wonder.

"_Mama__ mia_!" Britoli jumped out of his seat and appeared in front of Link so quickly it was like he'd been there all along. He was bent over, eye level with the blade, jaw hanging open and face ticking with a manic-wide smile. He started blathering in Caredan, his voice warbling through a huge variety of excited tones as he rambled like a madman. Link tossed a disturbed look to Tony, who shrugged, a look of mild disturbance mirrored in his own expression.

"_Oh __great__… __he__'__s __a __nutter_," Arrika muttered.

Link was about to think something back at her when Britoli stood up suddenly and grabbed him by the shoulders. He wound up looking down into the man's bushy eyebrows as he stood far too close for comfort.

"I must own this blade!" Britoli intoned, emphasizing it by giving Link a shake. "You will sell it to me. Name your price."

"It's not for sale," Link replied, annoyed. Only the utmost concentration had kept him from reacting to the man's sudden advance with automatic, reflexive violence. The clutch on his shoulders invited so many countermoves that it was hard to suppress them all.

"Of course it is—everything is for sale! Now, if you would please cut through the 'hard bargaining' phase and tell me the price? I can make it far more worth your while than some backwater prince! I'll double your pay—hell, I'll quadruple it!"

"Listen, _buddy_," Link flicked off his grip like it wasn't there, "You can't pay me any amount that would make it worth my life. The sword was locked to me by a spell—my employer will know right away if I give it up. My life wouldn't be worth dirt after that. So, if you'd be so kind as to cut through the 'crazy behavior' part, I'd like an estimate on a matching scabbard now."

"I… ah…" Britoli's manic expression calmed with suspicious ease. "Of course. You must forgive me—I am quite passionate about these things. If the sword is not for sale, then it's not for sale. However, the piece has captured my interest. I'll draw up a few preliminary designs tonight and otherwise clear my schedule. If you would be so kind as to return at your convenience another day, we can take measurements and you can approve the design."

"Uh… okay." Link opened his mouth to say something more, but Britoli turned on his heel and marched back to his chair. He almost followed him, but a servant who hadn't been there a moment ago pulled him around with a gentle touch to the shoulder and gestured for him to leave. Tony spoke with a steward, arranging a future meeting, and then they were on the way out. It was surreal.

"_This guy is going to be trouble_." Arrika sounded dead serious now, and Link pricked an ear by reflex. "_I've seen that look before. His desire was palpable—it won't be dissuaded nearly that easily. What's more… I think he might have recognized the sword._"

_"Really?"_ The first thing that occurred to Link was that, if he recognized the blade containing Arrika, he might know more about the other Sword Maidens. Then he caught up with the point she'd been trying to make. "_Ah, crap._"

"_Yeah, we'd better be on the look out. In fact, I'd have to recommend scrubbing the whole deal. The sword will be fine without a scabbard—it's indestructible as long as I'm bound within it. Still, just staying away from that nut is not likely to solve the problem. He knows about me now._"

"_That's right. So, we're going to pretend like everything is normal. We're going to go back there, and we're going to find out just how much he knows about legendary swords. If he tries something, we'll just have to take it in stride._"

"_Link…_" Arrika sounded oddly touched, "_are you really… trying to find my sisters_?"

Link shrugged, and Arrika's phantom was bounced on his back. In a tiny, tiny little voice, she apologized for the 'misguided and unoriginal' comment she made earlier. For a moment, the casual embrace that let her hang over his shoulders became something much more like a hug.

**Alphonse Britoli's Trophy Room, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Back within his weapon-wallpapered sitting room, Britoli sat limp and listless in his chair. In his mind swam the vision of beauty that had been that sword. He must own it… there was simply nothing else to it. It was, after all, one of the legendary swords. It was his greatest ambition to own every sword of wonder still in existence, and this could very well be his first step toward that goal.

There were dozens of legendary swords, but only four that he'd been able to confirm that actually existed. The first he'd just seen—the sword of Jean Orleans, _Bijou__ Blanc_. Years of research had hinted that it was lost in the impenetrable troll-infested swamps south of Ghent, and yet that Hylian rube had carried it upon his back like a common infantry hand-and-a-half sword. The very thought of it was intolerable, the sword belonged in the special plinth he'd prepared in his private vault, where only his own genius could gaze upon its wonder and contemplate its incredible power.

The second, also close to Careda, was the liberator that brought down the ancient terror, the wizard under whose terrible reign Careda had been cloven into three nations, and whose vast Dark Age had enveloped all the nations of the west. It was called _Zweihander_, and he'd localized it to the ruins of that wizard's black citadel in the frozen beast-lands of Gauhome, to the north. Every expedition he sent to claim it vanished without a trace into the trackless and deadly wastes.

The third was somewhat further away, the holy avenger of Hyrule, The Sword That Repels Evil. He'd begun to draw plans for a personal trip to those 'civilized' lands to begin a search for its resting place, but with _Bijou__ Blanc_ ready at hand, those fled from his mind. He couldn't be bothered with that at the moment anyway—it was said to be untouchable until one had gained proof of the virtues valued by the Hylian goddesses.

The last was as much a dream as a true goal, but he was just as certain that it was real. He'd heard of it from a sailor who'd heard of it from a zora who'd heard of it from an elder sage of his people, and the story matched some ancient texts he'd acquired at exorbitant cost. The sunken city of Azkati, once the jewel of the world on its island home south of Tonza, was the final resting place of another sword of power. No mortal lips recalled its name, but the zoras spoke of a blade that moved like a wave and struck like a school of darting ripper fish. Thus, in his notes he called it the Vorpal Sword. Locating Azkati seemed a heroically difficult task, but it was also a distant obstacle, meanwhile a much more manageable obstacle resided far closer to home.

This then, was the first phase of achievement in his ultimate itinerary. He must have the sword away from that peasant, and the man safely dead to secure his ownership against all claims. Already one of his servants was following them, collecting intelligence while he himself formulated a plan. The sword would soon be his, and its owner but a memory.

**The _Pugiltorium,_ Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Alright, Link, are you ready?" Tony asked, leaning just inside the competitor's locker room. The Pugiltorium was so large that every fighter got his own cubicle to change and warm up inside of, although larger spaces were reserved for more important fighters or for team meetings. Link was squeezed into a nine-by-five space with one bench and one locker, halfway changed.

"Just about," Link answered. It took him a bit longer than normal to strip down and warm up, because the plan called for a bit of pageantry in costume. The idea was simple enough: engender as much disfavor from the crowd as possible so they would bet against him and skew the bookie's odds. The more people that bet on his opponent, the further the bookies would have to shift the odds to still make money if his opponent won. To this end, Tony and Link had put their heads together, and they'd gotten creative.

"_El__ Lupo __de__ Hyrule_!" a voice called from down the halls. Tony flinched, peering out, and then popping his head in again.

"Link, they're calling for you. You need to move over to the competitor's waiting room now. Good luck."

"Don't worry about me! Just hurry up and get to the betting tables before they close!" Tony nodded, and then turned and ran off. Link was left alone in the tiny room, the noise of the distant crowds echoing down through the very stones of the arena.

Satisfied that he was sufficiently loose and limber, Link finished pulling his thin, elaborate, and finely-crafted cloth mask down over his eyes and stretching it into place. He rubbed a quick layer of grease over it, and it cemented into place like a second skin. The gray expanse gave him the features of a wolf, and his forehead bore the Triforce symbol of Hyrule. The idea was to threaten Caredan national pride by emphasizing his foreign origin and intrusion into their ancient, traditional games. It had the added benefit of hiding his face, giving him the opportunity to remain anonymous in a sport infamous for making men into national celebrities. A quick layer of tape went around the knuckles of each hand, just tight enough to ease the bone-cracking force of an athlete's punches, and then Link was out the door.

**The Pugiltorium Betting Tables, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Last call for bets on round one, match five, three minutes till all betting closes!"

So shouted the shifty-looking, beady-eyed man who stood behind the metal bars of the betting tables. He and his fellow clerks did a brisk business of exchanging stacks of gilders for betting vouchers, meanwhile burly guards with moderately heavy but understated weaponry and light armor watched the patrons like humorless statues. No sooner were those words out of the teller's mouth than did the skinny form of Tony elbow to the front of the line over loud protests.

"Greetings, my good man! Lovely evening for a fight, isn't it?" Tony wasted no time establishing his right to be there, despite rumblings of angry patrons behind him. The clerk just gave him a tired look and tapped impatiently at his bet register. "Yes, of course, my bet! I was wondering if you could tell me the odds on 1-3?"

"Odds as of now are 50-1 against the underdog, 'The Hylian Wolf.'" His voice dripped with disdain as he read off that goofy pseudonym. "That means for every 50 gilders you bet, you earn one extra when Isandro trounces him, or 2 copper pennies for every 1 gilder, as the case my be. Hurry up, you've got two minutes left."

"Right then, I'd like to bet my First National Bank of Careda marker for 300 gilders on this Hylian fellow to win."

The clerk was halfway done noting down a bet for the favorite, Isandro the Bull, when his brain registered what had actually been said. His eyes proceeded to pop and he dropped his pen. Behind Tony, other patrons gasped or grunted in shock. 300 gilders was an astronomical sum, enough to buy a champion warhorse and then completely outfit a heavily armored knight to ride it. It would have bought a small house in the good part of the city or an entire tenement in the bad part. It would have bought six thousand hefty meat-pies or twelve thousand cabbages. It was twice what a working man made in a year. At 50-1 odds, he stood to recoup an astronomical 15,000 gilders—literally a king's ransom.

"I-I-I need to speak with my manager!" the clerk ducked out into a back room, and all eyes turned to Tony.

"Are you out of your flippin' mind, son?" asked a burly working-type from the next line over. "You gonna' hand two years' wages over to the mob, just like that? You'll never see that money again, you know. The challenger is some mad coot!"

"Yeah!" the crowd shouted agreement.

"Look here," a tired-looking pankration fan picked up from behind Tony in line. "This guy's never even been in the ring before, as far as the program organizers have been able to determine. He listed twelve different fighters as his teachers, including the champ! It's obviously some kind of crank thing. Poor bastard is going to get broken in two by Isandro—he's a _real_ animal!"

"I once saw Isandro break a man's neck with one arm!" shouted an anonymous voice, and other who'd seen the feet chimed agreement. There was a murmur of general agitation from all around, and Tony tried to look self-assured.

"What can I say folks?" Tony shrugged expansively. "My boss is Hylian, visiting distant relatives. She told me to take her pocket-money and bet it on this joker. Poor old hen doesn't know a thing about the sport, but who am I to tell a rich person how to waste money? I'm just doing my job."

The crowd seemed mollified by this story. If rich foreigners wanted to blow their riches in imbecilic ways, it was no concern of the average Caredan joe-schmo. A few shrewd customers actually tried to solicit Tony for access to his patron to apply for work, but Tony stonewalled them. Elsewhere, tensions were still running high.

**The Betting Tables Back Room, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

The betting table clerk stood in front of the chief bookie and sweated until his work-shirt was stained. The greasy, well-dressed man, Estaban Trodo, was a mafia big-shot, and could make him disappear with a few words. Keeping him happy was a better method for ensuring long life than clean living and exercise.

"It's got to be a fix," the bookie said, scratching his chin as he nursed his red wine. "No one would bet that kind of money unless he knew for sure. But… it's not our fix. The projection said our best bet for making a killing was on 1-5, we own Montigo's soul, so he's our fall-boy. There's no way anyone could get Isandro to take a fall… so how are they doing it?"

"If I may sir, the other clerk overheard that it was a throw-away bet from some rich old hag. Maybe… it's genuine?"

"Are you kidding me?" the clerk's whole body clenched as he was considered with a belittling stare. "I know every high roller in the building—_this_ is a _scam_. The only question is, what fool is stupid enough to try this on the Vichetti family?"

"The fool is still right outside in the lobby. Do you think we should have the boys pick him up?"

"Well… no." Estaban smiled. "No. If they _have_ managed to fix it, we'll make a damned _mint_ off all the people who've bet on the 'sure thing.'"

"Yeah but… not fifteen K!" The clerk was aghast. That much gold was a bit more than the entire year's budget for their betting ring.

"So what?" The bookie had a mean look in his eyes. "Who's saying we honor their bet? We'll cover them for only 100 gilders, just to make it look like we're taking this seriously. If they win, we transfer the five K we'd owe them to the bank that's co-signing their marker. Then we have someone follow them home tonight. Either we make 100 gilders off some crazy bet, or we sweat some double-dealing smart-guys for their account numbers. Nothing's to say they'll survive the experience, and we make back everything they tried to cheat us out of, _with__ interest_."

"This… is why you're the boss, Boss." The clerk shared in the head bookie's nasty smile. "I'll assign one of the boys to follow this joker. We'll find out what he's trying to pull, and then he can answer for trying to rip us off."

"Yeah… or…" Estaban got an entirely different look. "If this guy can guarantee a victory over Isandro with 300 gilders' worth of confidence, we might just have to give him a closer look. We could make a lot more money by getting our hooks into him than we could by just robbing him."

"Uh, okay boss," the clerk tried to keep up with his yes-man work, "Whatever you say."

**The _Pugiltorium_Arena Floor, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

The crowd was deadly silent. A torch-lit stadium that normally echoed with cheering was so quiet, the roar of the nighttime wind could clearly be heard. In fact, the only noise of any interest was the gentle whimpering coming from the quivering lump of muscle that had once been Isandro the Bull.

"_I__ think __you __broke __him_," Arrika's spirit was lounging in the sandpit near Link, and hers was perhaps the only jaw in the stadium that wasn't hanging open. "_Or__ at __least __his __arm, __anyway_."

"Definitely _the __arm_," Link agreed, admiring his handiwork. Isandro was roughly a quarter again as big and massive as he was, but, overconfident, he'd come in entirely too high and loose. The very first punch had earned him an arm-lock that Link had persecuted into a twisting-snapping motion with extreme prejudice. First he'd shattered the elbow joint, then he'd cracked the radius and ulna bones in the forearm. He'd nearly moved on to the wrist and fingers, but Isandro had fainted without his noticing and the referee, despite his surprise, had whacked him upside the head with his ruling bat. Link was nursing the lump from that, but Isandro was nursing his arm, which was bent the wrong way at the elbow, and bent in a place it shouldn't bend a little further down.

Link quickly proceeded out of the sand pit as Isandro's trainers rushed in to treat his injury. The crowd had gone from stunned silence to shocked muttering and whispering, and Link hurried to disappear into the locker rooms. He stole a robe off a locker room door and scraped his mask off in a dark corner, tying a headband around his ears to hide them. No one gave him a second look as he made his way out of the complex, they were all too busy spreading the news of the terrific upset victory. Very soon, there would be a great many people interested in meeting "The Hylian Wolf," but that personage had already vanished. The next match in the tournament was the next night, and while Link wasn't quite sure if he'd be making an appearance for that one, he knew for a fact that it wouldn't be nearly this easy getting in or out.

**The Streets of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"In Dio's name, Link, five thousand gilders!" Tony had stars in his eyes. He had copped to a gambling problem the day they'd met, and their escapades tonight fed his beast. "FIVE THOUSAND!"

"I'm just glad they took the bet." Link was rather cold in the robe he'd filched for his escape, but the nighttime streets were crowded enough that no one could be bothered to notice one eccentrically dressed nobody. "Not as glad as I'd be if they'd bought your story and backed all three hundred gilders, but still glad. Five thousand gilders is enough to set me for the rest of my life, several times over. Your cut should be more than enough to get you settled somewhere pleasant."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tony asked. He looked perplexed, as though he couldn't comprehend what Link was getting at.

"What that _means_, is that we're done. We've got more money than I'll ever need, and you've got enough to have a running start. After tonight, there'll be _questions_. _Uncomfortable_ questions. Why risk anything more?"

"Why? Link—you could win the championship! Your name would live forever in the annals of Caredan history! Even with the odds climbing to even up—you winning is a certainty! We could both be rich as kings!"

"Tony…" Link felt his chest constrict. He really, really wanted to be the champion of the Great Games. Like, he couldn't put words to the desire, it was so intense. The money was the least of his concern—he just wanted to get in there and beat faces in until he'd been proven the best. In his heart, he couldn't decide if his decision not to continue was genuine prudence, or just a reaction against that all-consuming desire to compete and dominate all rivals, the one that had always seemed too foreign and distinct from his own personal will. It was enough to give him pause.

"Maybe. Okay? Maybe."

"That's what I'm talking about my man!" Tony gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder. "We'll be high-rollers yet!"

Little did they now it, but a mafia button man dressed as a crate-wielding stevedore tracked them all the way back to their hotel. The street urchin serving as his running messenger carried the address back to the local mafia safe house, where investigators would soon search out the identity of Tony's strange-looking partner and all their known associates.

When they got to their room, they failed to notice that they had new neighbors—a high lady taking orders from Camilla Batista and a cabal of her personal agents. Discreetly working spies under employment of the _mujerrouge_ were collecting information on where Link had come from and trying to find out what he'd been doing at all the places they'd traced him to today.

Britoli had his address, care of Tony and the need to streamline their 'business' together. His servants already had a fairly detailed account of his doings back to their master, and knew the two of them were up to something around the _Pugiltorium_. The great artisan was puzzling over that, even as he paid an independent information-gathering service to research the man and his doings.

By the dawn of the next morning, Lady Batista, Britoli the Great, and the mafia under Signore Trodo, all knew Link was the Hylian Wolf. They all knew he'd just come into possession of a huge sum of money, and they all knew he was staying with a mysterious young woman disguised as a nun. They all knew of his association with Dino the Champion, and they all knew he was a breakout master of pankration. They all knew of his escapades on the rivers, and they all knew of rumors that a Hylian meeting his description had slain a giant octarock out in the sticks somewhere. Therefore, all of them knew they were dealing with a personage of no small mettle. Therefore, all of them decided to proceed with the utmost caution and highest degree of ruthless efficiency in their respective operations to ruin his streak of good fortune.

What none of them knew was anything at all about each other. Also, and despite their investigations, the various interested parties were still quite ignorant of just who it was they were contending with.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"Evening boys," Ashei said, as she stepped into Zelda's room. She checked on the guards during every shift, and spent odd hours just waiting by Zelda's side. Her duties were many and strenuous, but not so much that she couldn't make time to stand sentinel over her monarch. "Listen, why don't you take off for a break until the next shift comes in?" The guards almost objected, but when they remembered who was asking, they decided to take it as an order.

Left alone, Ashei took up the chair next to the Princess' bed and sat back. More than once she'd spent this alone time trying to find some appropriate apology that she might whisper to the monarch she'd failed, but always she could come to no words that would express her contrition. Now, as ever, she sat in silence. Only this time, the trial of endless hours sleepless and stressed to the breaking point caught up to her. The silence enveloped her, and her head nodded down to a restless slumber.

She awoke with a jerk, upset with herself and at first unsure of how long she'd been asleep. The next shift of guards hadn't arrived, so it couldn't have been more than a few moments, and she hurried to check on Zelda again. In an instant, her brain exploded with panic, because _Zelda__wasn__'__t__there_. The bed was empty, and Ashei nearly cried out as she sprang to her feet. Her eyes scanned the room once, and the relief that overcame her knew no description. Zelda wasn't in her bed because she was standing at the balcony.

She still wore the light nightgown the doctors had put her to bed in, and it blew around her, meshing with the curtains in the breeze until it looked like one big billowing wall of sparkling silk. Still, her hair stood out like a brilliant ribbon in the cloud of chiffon, and Ashei was touched by the beauty of the scene, even as she stepped up to her delightfully conscious leader and friend.

"Your Majesty!" Ashei nearly wept the words. "You're awake! Oh, thank the Goddesses!"

"Ashei?" Zelda's voice sounded distant, numb, and Ashei felt her glorious high begin to recede as new concern assailed her.

"Your Majesty? Zelda?" Ashei was only a few steps behind her now, and pushed her way through the curtains to stand at her shoulder. "How do you feel?"

"How… do I feel?" Zelda sounded confused, listless, and Ashei's heart tightened in her chest. It would be too much to see her recover, only to have permanent damage remain. It would almost be crueler than mere death.

"Zelda!" Ashei took her monarch by the shoulder and turned her around, and her heart skipped a beat, nearly stopping dead in her chest. Her hand went to her mouth and she stepped away by reflex.

Zelda's eyes were glowing like two golden lamps. Each one was its own star, a piercing light that was almost too bright to look at. The effect was nothing short of horrifying, and Ashei felt her skin try to crawl off her body. No amount of acclimation to blood and battlefield horror could prepare one for the sheer supernatural terror of such an unnatural sight.

"Ashei," Zelda seemed to gain some small amount of cohesion as she watched her War Minister shrink away. "I had a dream… but I forgot it. The part I remember though… was the part where Hyrule stood astride the world, greatest nation in history. I will make that happen."

The glow began to fade slightly, and Ashei, who could no more turn away from that hair-raising sight than flee in terror as her every instinct demanded, spotted in the center of each intense flare the suggestion of a triangular point-source. When that finally impressed upon her, the terror transformed into something closer to religious awe. Intellectually, she'd known Zelda was a child of prophecy, but never before had she had such a dramatic demonstration.

Zelda smiled at her, and then turned around to gaze back out over her city, still entranced. As she watched, Ashei saw the glow fade slowly by the lessening of its reflection off the window glass. In time, her eyes were just eyes, and when the next shift of guards came in, the news that the Princess was up and about again was quick to spread.

Ashei was not so certain that Her Majesty was fully recovered. Though she would never admit it, the general was no longer certain that Her Majesty was _human_. The real question, however, was not if she was human or not. The question that would secretly haunt her was: as long as she carries the nation to greatness… does the state of her humanity even matter at all?

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

Man, you know, when I first came up with the concept of the Traveler, I had no idea I would get to like it as much as I do. I've seriously got real plans to give her a spin-off fiction. The reason why that isn't a terrible idea should become obvious in later chapters.

The potential for entertaining hijinks represented in the buildup of this chapter was, for a short time, highly promising in my own imagination. It didn't last.


	19. Traps

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 5: Traps**

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda shifted a stack of paperwork from one side of her desk to the other, one item at a time. It was a moment's work to read each sheet completely and another moment's to sign off or send it back to its department of origin. In good news, the farming and urban redevelopment plans were proceeding beautifully, the castle was one-third of the way completed, and spirits were high all over the nation as the harvests came in with bumper yields. In the bad news, the merchants had yet to be dealt with, the state of everything was still seriously sub-par, and there was one extremely dangerous man running loose. To cap it all off, she'd had an… 'experience'… one that defied her every attempt at quantification.

"Page!" she said, and a series of youths obediently arrived to carry away the paperwork. She'd cleared out everything in less than ten minutes, and now was left with a clean and neat desk. Still, it was no time for rest. Her hand played for a moment at the whispering stone around her neck. That decision was the one that plagued her… how much to tell him… and when… or whether or not to call him at all.

As one cycle of her mind toyed with various policy decisions and another bemoaned the unavoidably slow rate of progress and considered ways to speed things up, she concentrated mostly on considering that most problematic decision. She wanted to speak with Link. She knew quite certainly that she had merely to ask, and he would move heaven and earth to arrive at her service here again. With a word, news of this attack on her could reach his ear, and he would burn a path of destruction to Reanalds' doorstep and obliterate the fiendish creature from existence. But… was that the _best_ course of action?

Certainly the man had tried to do something to her. Her memories were foggy—she only really started to think clearly some _hours_ after Ashei told her she'd actually woken up. As for before the poison or drug had taken effect, she recalled only a general sense of freedom from all concerns. That gave her a very good idea of what it was he'd tried, and her disgust was tempered only by the fact that it had failed, and in so doing, had wrought some further change in her. She'd yet to nail it down, and Ashei had been evasive about the period where she'd been awake and yet entranced, but she could feel the difference. As interesting as that development was though… he had nearly killed her.

For his betrayal, Reanalds deserved death, and though she hadn't the proof to arrange it legally, there were plenty of other ways to arrange it. It literally wasn't any problem at all to simply have him meet an untimely accident. Still… to do so would deprive her of a moderately effective lord that she could not soon replace… the manifest evidence being Reanalds Jr. If she simply replaced him with an appointed governor, even her most loyal nobles would soon be questioning her intentions in the loudest possible manner. Therefore… perhaps… a somewhat more finessing touch was required. There were other ways to render a man impotent than simply seeing him murdered.

Almost immediately, Zelda pulled out draft-quality paper and started to sketch out an official royal letter. After the pleasantries and diplomatic necessities, she wasted not a single word in outlining her 'request.' "In return for your recent services," she wrote, "I feel that I should provide some service to you of my own. I pondered for some time the available options, and have finally decided that I would enjoy the attendance of your charming children upon my personal court. They shall enjoy a position of honor and education in royal care. Needless to say, this is not a request, it is a royal command." After a moment's thought, she smiled and completed the letter. If he refused a reasonable royal edict, no matter what it might happen to be, she had a perfect excuse to strip him of any lands and titles she wished. If he complied… she'd have hostages. As an added bonus, there was an outside chance of actually rehabilitating Reanalds Jr. into something resembling a decent person. Either way, Reanalds Sr. would never get another chance to plot against her, not if he valued the sum total of his potential legacy.

And, someday in the future, when this incident was well and truly forgotten in popular memory, Reanalds would suffer some ignoble and humiliating death. Perhaps he'd contract a virulent venereal disease, or he'd fall off his horse. Choking on something was also a distinct possibility—perhaps a chicken bone or a pretzel. Maybe he'd encounter a rare parasitic worm that infested the genitals or horribly disfigured the face. The bottom line was, he was a defunct entity, and his day of reckoning was on the horizon.

It was, perhaps, not the most advisable course of action. Certainly the safest bet would simply be to dispose of him now. However, the safest course of action and that which was most valuable to her current policy were not the same thing. Exacting vengeance immediately was the course of passion, the very same foolishness that had lead Reanalds to his impending destruction. Revenge, as it was said, was a dish best served cold, and that cliché suited her plans just fine. He would get his in good time, and until then, his children would be insurance against further plots. If he tempted fate past even their lives, or figured she was bluffing, she would simply annihilate him.

In the meantime, what Link didn't know, couldn't agitate him. Zelda was relatively certain that everything here would work itself out without having to involve a divinely-anointed engine of destruction. Besides, he was involved in his own business, the gist of which seemed to be making himself ever more ridiculous and unstoppable in a fight. That was far more important than crushing some worm here at home. Doubtless he was involved in some serious business or another right this moment.

**_Il__Albergo__del__Sole_, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"Come on, I have to use the privy!" Tony shouted, banging on the door to the tiled bathroom.

"Bugger off! I'm trying to keep my fins from drying out in here!" Leeta flatly refused to open the lock. "I'm sure they've got these nasty pots you land-walkers use somewhere else in this wood box of yours!"

"Would you two shut up?" Link looked up from where he was rather futilely attempting to refine the polish of his sword. "I can't hear myself think!"

"Link, you've gotta get her out of there," Tony turned to beg his patron and friend's assistance with evicting the petulant teenage fish from their privy. "This is unbearable!"

"Oh, stuff it, Tony," Link stood up, wrapping his sword in canvas and cord. "In fact, let's get out of here. I'm going stir crazy in this room. The last time I went this long without seeing the sky, I was entombed in a maze infested by the restless dead."

"Right… well… at least I can stop at the privy in the lobby… so where are we going?"

"Who cares?" Link threw on a clean white tunic and attached the sword to his belt, eschewing the rest of his equipment. "Anything's better than sitting around here. We've got ten or so hours until I need to decide if I'm heading back to the arena. I'd rather not spend that time cooped up here.

"You know—I'd like to see the sky too!" Leeta shouted from the bathroom.

"Tough luck!" Link shouted back, already halfway out the door, "you chose _this_!"

"You know what?" Leeta tried to keep the argument going, but the door slammed shut, and Link was gone. She was quiet for a moment as she hunkered down on the tiles next to the chamber pot. "I'm still glad I chose this," she whispered to herself.

Link and Tony walked down the stairs, leaving the hotel. Five minutes later, three extremely large men walked out of the room next to theirs. A substantial bribe had earned them an extra key to Link's room, and at this early hour, no one was around to question their presence. Two went in, the third watched the door, and some muffled thumping and shouting soon echoed in the finely-built hotel. Still, there was no one around to care when the two men came back out with a sack between them, and all three discreetly left the building through the servants' entrance.

**Armorers Guild Market Outlet at Market Square, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"No, no, no!" Link rubbed his forehead in exasperation. "Tony, what part of 'low-profile' is so hard to translate?"

"Link, you have to understand, these people usually outfit soldiers," Tony gave a sweeping gesture to the racks and racks of generic armor accessories arrayed all around them. "The stuff they make here just isn't best suited for slinking around."

As they spoke in Hylian, a very annoyed-looking clerk stood to one side storing away yet another rejected set of armor. At this point, only Link's extremely impressive bank voucher was able to keep him from tossing the lout right out of his store. As it was, he was willing to take quite a bit more abuse than he had so far to close out the kind of sale this was shaping up to be.

"Alright, alright, I guess… I guess I'll just have to improvise." Link took another look around the huge store. "Ask them if I can buy pieces individually."

"I can tell you now, the signs hanging around the shop suggest it's cheaper to buy them as sets. Still, they'd bark like dogs if it would get you to spend for a full arrangement of the high-end stuff."

"Well…. money isn't an issue. Come on, and bring the clerk. This could take some time."

"Weren't you _saving_ money?" Tony looked suddenly suspicious, and Link shrugged as he started to point the team of clerks that had materialized out of the back room without Tony's help.

"My priorities have shifted. I'm highly suspicious of Britoli, so I think I'm going to investigate that a bit more closely. In the meantime… you," he nabbed a clerk, "get me that," he easily breezed past the language barrier to score a plain, if finely crafted leather-coated steel scabbard with a soft, non-stick interior lining. Before Tony could question him, he swung out his sword, stripped the canvas away from only the blade, and slipped it gently into the container. "Hah, it fits."

"But… but…" Tony glanced over at the rack the scabbard had come from. The price placard read 12.5 gilders. "All that work… it was damn near to a quest… and now you're just going to buy a generic scabbard off the rack? What about your boss—the commission? What—"

"Tony, don't worry about it, okay?" Link glanced a smile at him. "_My__ priorities __have__ shifted_. The less you know, the less danger will rub off on you. Now, help me haggle with these skinflints."

An hour later, Link walked out with Tony a slightly less wealthy man, but a slightly less wealthy man in possession of a composite of the finest chainmail and leather armor that money could buy. He'd ordered it sewn into a heavy-fiber olive green tunic and coated in tacky weatherproofing chemicals, then delivered to his hotel. The scabbard with his sword was bound over his shoulder, the blade ready to be drawn at a moment's notice, but the hilt still wrapped in canvas to hide its exquisite gems.

"Hey, do you want to grab some lunch?"

"Food?" Link sniffed the air reflexively, noticing the heady scent of spiced and grilled fish. "Sure, why not. Lets just make sure we get enough to take some back to Leeta."

"Right. In that case, we should get the good stuff. I'll show that scaled brat what human civilization has to offer. I know this great little fry joint down at the other end of market square… ah but it's gonna be packed at this time of day…"

"Hey, don't sweat it." Link flipped out the book of marker checks the bank had given him after his deposit. He tore out a note and handed it over. "You go pick up lunch while I hit the tanner's quarter. Better to not to be around the leather-curing piss-vats after eating, you know?"

"Yeah, well, I don't envy you that trip. I hate the tanner's shops." Tony took the check and tucked it away. "Honestly, I don't understand why you don't just send someone out to buy the tack and bridle for your horse."

"Hey, I'm just not the type to order folks around. Besides, the tanning vats may stink, but fresh leather is _nice_."

"You weird yokel," Tony turned and walked away, waving off Link's odd behavior as he went. Link smirked and walked off in the opposite direction.

Tony got all the way around the corner before a kid ran up and crashed right into him. He was staggered, but still managed to notice as the kid sliced the purse right off his belt. The urchin was away with his money down an alley before Tony could get his feet squared again, and he cursed fluently as he gave chase. He never saw the club whistle around and clip him on the back of his head. He was unconscious before he hit the ground, and had been nailed into an empty beer cask and rolled away in a matter of moments.

Link was less than one hundred feet away when Tony was herald-napped. He was deep in thought about what parts of his travel kit he should replace while he was still in the big city. The streets around him were crowded, but following the directions he'd gotten at the armorer's shop, Link threaded through the massed shoppers and storefronts.

At length Link came to a stairway leading up to a choked t-intersection. He had just finished his mental inventory of travel equipment as Arrika bent his ear about the eight-hundred year old legend of the Lord of Silence—the wizard that had dominated the known world several ages past—when he noticed a man waving his arm up at the intersection. The man wasn't waving to him, rather he seemed to waving off to the left, but the motion still caught his eye. That was when a trickle of danger crept into his consciousness.

It was difficult, in the city, to notice it at first. Being in the city was a constant, low-level hum of tension. Compared to combat, this sense of imminent danger was nothing, little more than a background noise. Still, his brow quirked to feel it tingle along his spine. He took a closer look around, noticing nothing threatening or unusual about the crowds, and shrugged to himself. He hopped up the stairs and turned the corner to the left, and almost instantly felt a sharp kick in the chest. He was a little off balance, so it actually staggered him backward until he fell on his butt. Looking down, he saw a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest perfectly over his heart.

For an instant, there was nothing but a ringing in his ears and the chill certainty that he was dead. He had been wounded dozens of times, perhaps approaching hundreds of times, but this was the first time he'd been struck in an obviously fatal manner. He'd taken cuts aplenty that bled profusely and required stitching, but barring infection were little more than flesh-wounds. He'd taken arrows in every part of his body, including his belly, but armor usually took the edge off of those, and the punctures healed quickly enough. He'd been crushed, burnt, bashed, and mishandled in every way imaginable, but the arrow protruding from the left side of his chest was by far the most horrifying injury he'd ever witnessed upon his own body. Far more chilling was the fact that he had no medicine on hand, nor a single captive fairy to his name

"_Stop panicking_," Arrika's voice, cool and almost angry, broke through his chilled distraction. Link's arm moved on its own to blur her sword out of its new scabbard just in time to deflect another arrow that came arcing in from a distant three-story building. It bounced off the sword with a clang that rocked his whole body and was shifted just far enough to the side that it only ripped a gash in his shoulder rather than impaling his jugular. "_If that wound were as fatal as it should have been, you'd already be dead. That doesn't mean you're safe from this assassination attempt._"

"Assassination?" Link mumbled as he rolled out of the street and took refuge behind a stack of barrels, but not before another huge arrow came whistling down to pierce him through the meat of his thigh. The force of it was enough to spin him around on the cobbles, but he finally managed to scramble into cover. He spent a moment just breathing and bleeding, and then something else occurred to him. "Did you just control my body?"

"_There's a time and a place for that conversation_, _as well as for the one where you tell me the truth_," Arrika replied, her outrage easily outstripping Link's. The wounded warrior didn't really pick up on that as he focused on preventing himself from succumbing to shock. "_Now, if this guy is as good as his marksmanship suggests, he'll be ready to finish the job. We should—_"

A sharp whistling broke through the sound of screaming bystanders and the blood throbbing in Link's ears. In instant response, doors all down the street flew open and a crowd of armed and masked men walled off the street in both directions. Link had a handful of seconds before they charged in to attack, so he ripped off one sleeve of his shirt and thrust it upward on the tip of Arrika's sword. An arrow whizzed down almost instantly and tore it away to nail it to a distant wall, confirming Link's fears. He would have to cover himself from more sniper shots while he eluded these thugs. With his last moment's reprieve, he snapped the tail off the arrow in his chest and then broke the arrow in his thigh apart and jerked out the pieces. Another shred of his shirt became a bandage for that wound, and then it was time to fight.

The first few men raced one another to put the finishing touch on their wounded opponent. Arrika's sword was naked in his hand, but he was hurt and prone besides, and caution abandoned the masked sellswords. Link parried an overhand-slash and then cut open a different wrist that stabbed at him with the same motion of Arrika's unnaturally sharp and nimble blade. Snatching the bloody wrist, Link used the stabbing man as a lever that he jerked upon to spring back to his feet, sending the screaming killer to the ground in the same motion. Next, the slashing man became an impromptu shield from the sniper as Link slipped by him and planted an elbow in his kidney so deep that he actually stiffened in paralyzed shock.

Three more opponents rushed at once, and Link quickly clipped open a kneecap, parried, broke a nose, spun away from an arrow, and grappled a man around the neck to claim another human shield. Maneuvering his hostage without concern for the man's shrieks of pain and gagging sobs, Link used him as post to launch a flying kick to another man's jugular, then a second kick to yet another opponent's belly. A few seconds after he keeled over from the gut-kick, Link shattered his face with the pommel of Arrika's sword, ending the short but furiously active melee.

Link didn't know whether or not the sniper was still on the lookout, but he kept his hostage anyway. If nothing else, the stranger functioned as a serviceable crutch as Link favored his wounded thigh. Once he'd limped around the corner, out of the sniper's possible firing arc, he tightened his chokehold until the man lost consciousness and then dropped him unceremoniously onto the cobblestones. He, like his fellow assassins, would probably survive the experience, and would perhaps think twice in the future before attacking a half-lamed, unarmored and lightly-armed man.

The street was deserted, eyes peeping out from doors and windows, but not one person moving to help. Link heard shouting in the distance, and he knew the city watch would arrive in moments to find the heap of crippled men he'd left behind. He figured it best he not be here for that, and so he muscled past the blazing agony in his leg and managed to limp away like a pathetic, crippled dog. It was hardly his finest moment, but considering the arrow that was _still_ lodged quite perfectly in his heart, Link really wasn't sure how it was that he was even _alive _right now

"_Link, you're bleeding to death. You have to stop somewhere and bind up those wounds_." Arrika's 'voice' sounded distant, and she wasn't even bothering to materialize her phantasmal form. "_On the way, you can tell me what it is you've been keeping from me_."

"What?" Link was actually, truly perplexed by that for a moment as he staggered into an alley and then slumped along a wall until the first open door he could find. He staggered into what appeared to be some kind of warehouse and found a pile of rags to collapse into. By now he was completely coated in his own blood, and he ripped off the ruined silk shirt to reveal the seeping wound on his chest.

"_Listen, child, I've seen plenty of strange things over the centuries. I've borne witness to things you can't even conceive of, and I've seen all the oddities that nature can produce. I've associated with great heroes of every reasoning species, the greatest of their peoples, each and every one. Now, for weeks I've been willing to accept your story, that you're just some kind of prodigy and nothing more. I'm telling you right now: that lie isn't going to cut it anymore. I have a vested interest in making certain my powers aren't being used by the demonically possessed, the willing agents of ruin, or those anointed by the Divos. Unless you give me a very convincing story in the next few moments, I'll have to assume you've been deceiving me from the start_."

"Are you _kidding_?" Link coughed up a mouthful of blood. He couldn't allow himself to be too distracted by her sudden hostility, because the wounds would need immediate treatment if he hoped to remain conscious. Without wasting a moment, he jerked the arrow shaft out of his thigh with a wash of blood. He re-tied the silk bandage and tightened it until the wound was numb from constant pain and the bleeding slowed to almost nothing. Next his hands went to the broken arrow still jutting from his chest.

"_Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough_." Arrika's sword jerked from Link's side and flew into the air. Her phantom materialized, holding it out to the side in a neutral fencer's pose. She looked down her aquiline nose at the wounded, but still dangerous warrior, and the expression there was truly terrible. Not like a young woman at all, or even like a person, but something older and far, far more terrifying. "_I have been ill-used by vile deceivers in the past. The contracting process is far from perfect, and you have given me ample reason to suspect you of being much more than you've said._"

The sword moved so quickly that Link didn't even see it. One moment it was held artfully to the side, the next it was poised at his throat. "_I would much sooner languish in dormancy than face that form of trickery again. _So answer me. _This_," she nodded at the non-fatal, fatal wound, "_among other things, proves easily enough that you are not a product of nature. I am going to ask just one more time. What is this power that elevates you beyond human capabilities_?"

"This," Link clenched his left fist and displayed it in a mercenary's salute. The Triforce did not disappoint, rising to his will and glaring like an angry eye from the blood-caked expanse of his hand.

At first, Arrika seemed surprised to see it, actually backing off an inch or two as her eyes narrowed in recognition. Then she sighed, her features flattening in some kind of dismay. She actually lowered her sword and put her free hand over her face, seeming almost pained by whatever decision she'd come to.

"Not… exactly… a resounding approval… but… at least… you're not… trying to kill me… anymore." Link's breathing had become slightly labored, and he was sweating frantically as he paled from blood loss. Taking the moment of reprieve, he gripped the arrowhead in his chest by the bit of shaft still attached to it and jerked on it, getting nothing for his effort but a bellow of agony. It was held fast, and so he pulled out a dagger from where it had been concealed in his boot and set to the process of digging it out. The pain was something else entirely, but it was far from the first arrowhead he'd been forced to remove, and the fact that it was his own body gave him a certain feel for what to cut around. The arrow came free at length with a final seeping of blood, and what was left of his shirt was quickly tied over the wound to close it off. By now, it was all he could do to keep his head together.

"_I apologize, Link_." Arrika lowered her hand, and now she practically looked ready to laugh. "_I'm simply overwhelmed by the irony. Fate, it would seem, truly has quite the sense of humor_."

"I… could use a laugh…" Link was pretty out of it, but now that his wounds were bound, he was coming back to himself. It actually didn't make much sense, from a medicinal perspective, but that was definitely what was happening.

"_I'm a person that was made into a weapon by father, 'Smith' the forge god. You're a person that was made into a weapon by Farore, of the Hylian Trinity. Here I am, fearing that I've been taken in by a fiend from the pits all over again, and you can probably identify with the angst of my eternal existence better than any but my own sisters. I always knew it was a divine hand that guided you to me, I simply didn't realize how_—"

"What are you talking about?" Link sat up slowly, favoring his wounds, and glared rather unpleasantly at his partner. "Who's a weapon? I'll cop to being handled by divine fate every now and then, but I'm still my own man!"

"_Heh_…" Arrika chuckled at that, but stopped when she realized he wasn't joking. She gave him a skeptical look and planted her sword in a crate to stop the drain on her energy that was waving it about. "_You can't honestly tell me that you don't understand the situation you're in by this point? I know how this works—I was _there_ already, back at the start. I actually knew the first Hero of the Triforce, before the Genesis Wars turned me and my sisters into helpless, human-dependent phantoms, and turned her and her two counterparts into little more than a lock on the cage that keeps the Divos in line_."

"Her?" Link was shocked to know that the first hero had been a girl. There was nothing like that in the mythology he'd heard. "What are you talking about, anyway? The Triforce is the earthly remnant of our creators, Nayrue, Farore, and Din. It resides in the sacred realm, where it waits for a being with a balanced heart, whose deepest wish will be granted by its power. That's the way I always heard it, anyway. No one ever bothered explaining why I've got a piece, but apparently is has something to do with being chosen to defeat evil. This 'made into a weapon' stuff is a whole new concept to me!"

"_That's… an incredibly incomplete understanding_." Arrika opened her mouth to educate him, but then closed it again. Link had an awful look on his pale and sweat-soaked face. "_What's wrong_?"

"I'm just not sure I really want to know. I realize things have been… different… since all this craziness entered my life. But still… a weapon?" He looked downright distressed, and it wasn't from blood loss.

"_Link, there's really nothing to it but to face the truth_." Arrika knelt beside him and looked him straight in his eyes. She didn't seem remotely child-like, but at least a veneer of humanity had returned. "_Think about the things you've achieved, even just while I've been with you. Human beings can't slay sea-monsters by hand. They can't single-handedly throw down armies, and they certainly can't survive direct, fatal hits from deadly weaponry. I'm sure you have a long list of other impossibilities to your credit of which I have no inkling. Simply ask yourself Link—are these the kind of things that lie within the reach of mere mortals?_"

"Now that you mention it…" Link was in a bad place. He'd known he was a freak, but he'd figured he was a freaky human. Now here was a god-forged weapon telling him he was a god-forged weapon. Takes one to know one, right? "I'm not sure I'm ready to handle this. Any chance we can not talk about it for now?"

"_I, for one, am just glad I don't have to worry. What I've been seeing was inexplicable if you were human. Now that I recognize you as a fellow victim of excessive divine meddling, I could almost consider you a peer. Well… an infant of a peer, but certainly a whole different level than the mortal swordsmen I've been reliant on for all these ages."_ Link had a dour, distressed look to him, and Arrika realized she wasn't getting through. "_Link, it's a good thing. Trust me._"

As though to prove it, Arrika grinned at him, and then flipped around and settled back into his body. Almost right away, Link felt energized, and actually managed to pry himself to his feet. Arrika was laughing with excitement on the inside of his skull, so much that he almost lost his balance again, and wound up leaning against a huge cask.

"What did you do? I feel like I could slay a dragon!" And it was true—once he recovered his equilibrium, he felt ready to tackle a goron. Rather than wait for an answer, he picked a serviceably large rag out of the heap he'd been bleeding on and wrapped it around himself like a tattered cloak. He then reclaimed Arrika's sword and immediately made his way back out into the city, Arrika still tittering in his brain.

"_Oh Link—this is wonderful! Our energies are somewhat compatible, and I managed to transfer some of mine to reconnect you to the vitality that flows from your divine font. You're still wounded, so you must be careful to get some medicine into you soon. But still, this is glorious! The best thing that's happened to me in… I can't even put a name to such a length of time_."

"Uh… okay." Link was concentrating on looking as much like a crippled beggar as he could, and simultaneously, as little like a wounded man who'd been marked for death as possible.

"_You don't understand—of course you don't understand, you're just a child_." Arrika gave him something like a metaphysical pat on the head. It was a very odd sensation. "_But what a wonderful child! You can do it, Link. You can really reunite my family! Not only that—you can free us_!"

"Free you…?" Link dodged into an alley as a patrol of mercenaries with half-drawn weapons stalked by. It was not difficult to keel over and make like a leper as he nursed the throbbing agony in his thigh. "I… wasn't aware that you were trapped."

"_Link… you aren't trying to pigeonhole me as some kind of 'sentient sword' again, right_?" There was no joke in Arrika's tone, and Link was forced to recall the way she'd bitch-slapped him for making such a comment in the tomb of the Lady Hero. "_I'm a person—much more than just a person, I might add. There was a time when I was every bit the creature of flesh and blood that you are now. I am not just some forsaken ghost, bound to an odd bit of magic steel. I thought we were clear on that_."

"Right, right!" Link almost gave himself away in his rush to placate her, but turned it into a coughing fit and immediately repelled all the attention he'd accidentally gained. "Sorry," he whispered, "I just never realized you considered your current state… unnatural. You also seem to identify yourself with this blade quite often."

"_Hmph_," Arrika sounded downright insulted, and Link mentally kicked himself. "_As though anyone would _want_ to be disembodied! Do you know what it's like to be crippled away from greatness? To be forced to rely on feeble, inferior mortals for your every locomotion? The covenant process was our father's last gift to us—a way to patch the damage we suffered during the Genesis War. It is a pale comparison to our former glory_. _As for referring to myself and my sword as one in the same... I suppose you could call that the force of habit._"

"I never knew," Link admitted, and then changed his tone, "and watch the 'inferior mortal' remarks."

"_Oh Link—what did we just get finished talking about_?" Arrika spoke down to him, but in an almost motherly way. "_I don't count you among the mortals anymore_."

Defying all intuition, that 'compliment' made Link's arrow-bruised heart drop down into the pit of his stomach. On a very real level, he'd been happy to be included in that category. The very idea that he wasn't was not doing pleasant things in the corner of his subconscious where he confined all the insanity of his life. Still, the task at hand, like usual, took all priority over the urge to freak out and have a breakdown. That much never seemed to change, and it never occurred to him for a moment that this was one more proof of Arrika's claim.

**_Il__ Albergo __del__ Sole_, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"What the devil?" Link muttered, as he thumped into his hotel room. The doorman had given him some trouble until he threw off the rags and flashed his room key, and his wounds had gotten wide eyes, but he'd been otherwise feeling quite secure now that he was back at his 'home base.' Now he found his room ransacked… ransacked and quite vacant.

"Aw goddesses… Leeta!" Link hobbled around, checking the privy room and all likely hiding places to no avail. Before he could begin to kick himself though, he located his equipment packs, quite undisturbed by the intruders, and picked out his medicine supply. Once the wounds were closed and he felt like he was running on more than a bit of voodoo and pure grit, _then_ it was time for him to kick himself.

"Din! How could I let this happen?" He wracked his brain for options as he set about the room, trying to reequip his scattered gear. "Why didn't I just send her home? It would have been so easy to truss her up and toss her in a first-class cabin back to the ocean!"

When he had his stuff together, less his old armor, which had been disposed of in anticipation of his shopping trip today, he marched down the stairs to the reception desk. The hotel manager spoke Hylian to a certain extent, and Link figured that was the only place he could start his search until Tony showed up. To his surprise, however, the manager was the one to accost him the moment he entered the lobby.

"Messages, you have many messages _signore_!" The manager looked pretty damn distraught, and Link realized immediately that there was something to these messages.

"The first," the manager held up a bit of parchment, "Left by a rather vile looking fellow with bad teeth, states: 'I met up with some old associates of mine from the arena and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. You need to show up for the match tonight at the _pugiltorium_, it's a matter of life and death.' It is signed, 'Tony.'"

Link didn't have to have the subtext of that message explained to him. Suddenly, things were looking quite a bit worse than he'd imagined. If Tony was being held by the same people that had fishnapped Leeta, why hadn't they both been mentioned in that oblique ransom message? Was this all about the money he'd taken off the mafiosos? What of those assassins?

"The second message was dropped by a charming young woman in a nun's habit." Link immediately thought of Leeta, but it couldn't have been her, right? "It says: 'I've discovered a lead on locating my missing comrades. I have to check on a few things, but please meet me tonight at the corner of the warehouse district and the fish market. Everything depends on it.' It is unsigned."

Link frowned and tried to decide how likely it was that Leeta had actually come up with something so urgent that she couldn't wait until he returned. It didn't sound remotely plausible, and the state of the room made him double certain that this was a trap. Still, what was going on? An obvious trap from the mafia and a second trap from someone else, and both baited with friends he couldn't afford to abandon? And if they wanted him to show up for their traps, why had they sent those killers? The manager had time-dated the messages _before_ the attack, so they _couldn__'__t_ be a response to his escape.

"Anything else?" Link had barely uttered the words before there was a commotion behind him at the front door. His nerves flashed with heat, and he ducked to the side just in time for a large dagger to miss him. It had been thrown from the street outside, and Link turned to see a backlit figure dart away. He was about to give chase when the screaming of the hotel's other patrons and workers caught up with him, and he noticed the doorman lying in a pool of blood. Instead of chasing the assassin, he wound up giving out the last bit of his red medicine, leaving him with half a bottle of blue.

It turned out, however, that the dagger had been attached to a message, and that message was read out to him by a very, very unhappy hotel manager. It was an ultimatum, which, summarized, demanded that he deliver his sword to a prepared drop location. If he did not, the assassins would follow him to the end of the world. Once again, it was not difficult to guess the intent, and now, the source of the message. Britoli was the one who'd tried to punch his ticket, quite independent of the mafia and Leeta's kidnappers.

"Brilliant…" Link sat down and waited. His armor would arrive from the shop soon enough, and then he would be ready to deal with all of this. As near as he could figure it, he would have to first focus on freeing Tony. That was the only situation he had any idea how to handle, and having the herald back on his side would expand his other options. He could only pray that Leeta would be alright in the meantime, and that the assassins would hold off until he could corner Britoli and have a 'friendly chat' about the correct, allowable recourses of high-stakes negotiation. Otherwise, he hadn't the slightest idea what he was doing.

"I hate the city," he muttered, as he scrubbed blood off his fingers and from the blade of Arrika's sword. "At least in the wilderness, you tend to know who the enemy is. And besides, out there, they just want to rob you, eat you, or both. Simple, right? Nothing like this."

Arrika didn't answer. Despite the circumstances, she seemed rather chipper, actually making a somewhat ethereal humming sound in the deepest recesses of Link's mind.

Some hours later, Link stepped out of the hotel's front door, and he was more completely armed and armored than he had been since he broke into Hyrule Castle with a dark wizard fixed firmly as his target. The equipment he'd bought from the armory, once it had been dressed to his specifications, actually looked a remarkable amount like the armor that the light spirits had granted him. The main difference was that the green tunic covered somewhat heavier torso armor, and his arms and legs were protected by the finest chainmail, greaves, and gauntlets money could buy. Despite the forge-fresh armor, nothing about him shined or gleamed, particularly not his expression.

His heavy equipment was bound to his harness, completely re-supplied. He'd sent the hotel's stewards out with money orders for a variety of equipment he'd intended to purchase before an assassination attempt interrupted him, and now his quivers and bomb bags were all filled, at exorbitant expense in the case of the bombs. A new supply of medication filled his bottles, and he'd even poured out his lamp oil to make room for an extra bottle. Whatever sort of chu-chu they brewed it from here, it smelled just as strong, if quite different from what he usually got back home. And again, the witch who brewed it up had made a tidy profit off of him for the rush order. In the end, haste had outweighed thrift by a huge margin.

Now, for the first time since he'd taken up his equipment again back home, he walked with it all on open display, not bothering to cover it with a cloak. It got him evil stares from the few city guards he passed, because there was nothing normal about a man coated in bandoliers of ammunition, a strung bow, an eighth-drawn sword, and a truly unpleasant expression. He stared down each and every one that even began to challenge him, and wound up being left quite alone. At length, he arrived at the _P__ugiltorium_.

The bouncer tried to stop him at the fighter's entrance, so Link broke his arm. He took a side stairway, one of many he'd memorized while setting up the scam he'd pulled with Tony the other day, and was soon in a side hallway close to the betting stands. Link walked with purpose in his stride as he advanced to the only place he knew for a fact he could find the mafia.

There were long lines of people trying to lay down money on night two of the Great Games, and Link ignored them. He passed around to the doorway leading to the back room behind the money-changing tables and found it locked. So, he jammed a dagger into the frame and ripped the lock right out. Clerks gathered around money bags turned to see the noise, and Link flashed the dagger at them. They raised an alarm immediately, and Link found himself flanked by hefty men with shortswords and brass knuckles. The clerks themselves rushed into a back room behind the guards, and the alarm quickly spread to the customers.

Link didn't really care about all that, he had a very narrow objective. He'd slung out his bow almost the moment he'd burst into the room, and by the time the guards were encroaching, he'd already lined up an arrow. Knee caps were the order of the day, and in a blinding flurry of bowstring, none were spared. Link left a screaming group of men bearing mild wounds that were still totally crippling, in pain if not in gross trauma.

The room was cleared of anyone that might answer his questions, and he could hear them shouting in both the back rooms and the lines outside the clerk's windows. Acting quickly, he found a hefty cabinet and put his back into shifting its impressive mass. Eventually, he managed to tip it right over and block the doorway out. He then moved to clap the metal shutters down in front of the money changing windows, shutting out any reinforcement from that side of the back rooms.

Turning on the spot, he faced the back door the clerks had fled through. There were still many voices on the other side. He kicked at the lock, and when it failed to give, he figured it to be securely barred on the other side. It was a simple decision to make, and he wasted no time tilting over a table and ducking behind it. He lit a bomb and tossed it blindly over his shoulder and the table to land at the foot of the door, and when it went of a moment later, its echoing explosion was chased by a similar explosion of screaming from outside the barred door and windows.

In the other room, Link found everyone knocked senseless by the explosion, several riddled with mild wood splinter wounds and not one willing to take up the arms they'd managed to gather while he was delayed in the front room. There were an array of doors to choose from now, and Link started on the right.

The first room was an office space combined with a booth that looked out over the arena. In the extensive view, Link saw people confused and frightened by the explosion and the commotion just outside the stadium's central seating. The room was abandoned, and Link moved to the next door.

The second door was opposite the door he'd blown out, and it opened onto an alleyway. It was an escape route, and he had no way of knowing who might have used it while he was delayed. Deciding there was nothing he could do about it either way, he turned back and found the last door on the left.

This one was heavily built and obviously designed to lock extremely securely from the outside. The locks were incredibly thick, but were undone for the moment. Never one to back down from a challenge, Link opened the door and stepped inside.

It was a vault, the storage space the mafia used to hold its profits and collateral to cover the gambling they oversaw, and it was currently stocked with enough money to cover all the hundreds upon hundreds of bets that were placed during this, the arena's peek season. The walls were literally lined with stacks and stacks of gilder-stuffed bags and chests, an almost inconceivable sum of golden cash money. Even Link's jaded eyes were dazzled by the display a moment, but it wasn't what he'd been searching for. Frustrated, Link turned back to the room. He pulled out a bomb and held it out, immediately gaining the attention of those who were still conscious.

"If you can speak Hylian," Link said, with a cool stare at the tumbled array of clerks and mafia bodyguards, "tell me to stop, and I'll consider not leaving this bomb as a parting gift."

"Don't!" one man shouted, and Link turned to see him gripping a gash on his shoulder. He was a bookish-looking man in his thirties, gone pale from recent events. "No more! I'm not paid enough to deal with this!"

"Then I suppose you wouldn't mind telling me everything you know about the herald your mafia bosses kidnapped a little earlier."

"Who?" The man said, rather weakly. Link smiled, slipping the bomb back into the bag. Instead, he pulled out a knife, holding it just out of view as he took a step closer.

"Shrimpy guy, big mouth, won a bet for several thousand gilders the other day. Strain your memory."

"Ah…" the clerk looked up and up at Link as the massive, heavily armed, armor-clad warrior encroached on him. "It's all coming back to me…. My boss… he's long gone now… but he was pretty talkative about it. You're 'The Hylian Wolf," aren't you? Yeah, that would make Tony your partner. Heh…" he chuckled nervously as Link towered over him. "Normally, I wouldn't dare talk, but it really doesn't matter now. You're too late if you're trying to rescue him. He escaped. We're not sure how. Word just came in not twenty minutes before you... arrived."

"Escaped?" Link thought about that for a moment, and then realized he had no way to confirm that. "How do I know you're not just trying to get rid of me?"

"Link?" the back door burst in, the noise of it startling the clerk. Link had detected nothing like danger, but his combat reflexes had almost sent the knife in his hand through the open portal anyway. Fortunate that he didn't, because the door was occupied by none other than the man of the hour, Tony.

"Link, thank Dio I found you! I mean, I was pretty sure it was you that all those people in the street were telling me about—you left a pretty blatant trail from the hotel—but I despaired of tracking you down." Tony stepped up and grabbed Link by the shoulders. He had a wild look about him, rough and tumble in a way that seemed really unusual for the scholarly herald. There was a smell of charred wood and filthy water clinging to his clothes, and he seemed to have only recently dried off. To cap off the strange image, he had a shortsword through his belt on one hip and a crude cudgel, perhaps a broken chair leg, on the other. Still, besides the new fire in his eyes, he seemed no worse for wear after his capture. "Link, there's no time to waste—I've found Leeta's people!"

"What?" Link followed Tony's hand as he pointed out the doorway, and there, standing in the alley, were two figures in shrouding cloaks. The distinct smell of oily scales, so familiar after weeks living near the water and in close contact with an aquatic denizen, wafted in on the breeze, only just detectable over the stench of burnt bomb powder. "Tony, the last I heard, you'd been kidnapped! What in the world happened?"

"Listen, it's a long story—I can tell you while we're on the way." Tony fairly dragged Link out the back door by his grip on his shoulder. "We have to hurry if we're going to make it in time to save Leeta!"

"Save Leeta?" Link fell into step behind Tony, and they were joined by the two hooded zoras the moment they were out in to the alley. "How about you start explaining things now?"

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

So this is it. Roughly here I realized I was becoming agonizingly bored with this story. I had been planning to make Link into something like superman from the beginning of this fiction. I just couldn't wait anymore. So here I began to setup so I could skip ahead to something a bit more interesting for me.


	20. Requiem for Romali p1

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 6: Requiem for Romali, Part 1**

**A Dark Place that Smells of Fish**

Tony rose to consciousness in a fitful series of false starts, mostly because it was impossible for him to tell the darkness of oblivion from the darkness of the inside of the potato sack tied over his head. In fact, he wasn't really aware and awake until someone pulled the hood off and stabbed his eyes with bright lamplight. He groaned once and rolled his head until his eyes gained focus and the roomed settled to a stop out of its nauseating spin. He hadn't really had a chance to develop any expectations, but when his vision settled on a boy of ten or twelve years with a lamp in one hand and a rusty dagger in the other, he found himself truly stumped.

"Wha…?" He managed to articulate, before the boy dashed around behind him and began cutting at the ropes tying his wrists to the chair he was bound into. Realizing that he was tied up brought even more questions to his mind, and he tugged fruitlessly at the ropes around his shoulders and ankles as he tried to reconstruct what had happened. He was on his way to buy some fried fish and beer when he'd been robbed. He'd chased the boy into the alley… and then…

"Are you the one who robbed me?" Tony asked, not at all sure if this was the case. His head hurt like crazy, his memory was a mess, but he didn't think this kid was the one he'd chased. Still, he did look familiar.

"I tried to rob your friend," the kid said, his voice grim and drawn, conveying a sense of moderate starvation and hopeless living. "He caught me. Then he gave me money. That money was enough to buy medicine for my little sister. When I saw Boss Guido and his boys pull you out of that barrel, I knew it was probably my only chance to pay your friend back."

"Where am I? What happened?" Tony tried a few more of the usual questions as he started to get his wits together. Now he recognized the boy, but he'd had no idea that Link had given him money, or how he'd run across the grateful youth's path.

"You're in the basement of the Mercy Orphanage at the Docks. That's why this whole place smells like rotten fish. A body hardly notices it, living here all the time, but it's really noticeable to other people. Makes it that much less likely that people will come looking to adopt, so the mafia boys can keep us kids for their work. Anyway, I'm not sure what happened to you, stranger, but I know nothing _good_ happens to the people Boss Guido puts down here."

The ropes binding his hands came free, and Tony brought them forward to rub at his chafed wrists. He was about to ask more questions when the kid suddenly dashed around him again and tossed the dagger into his lap. He was so surprised that he couldn't form a question until the youngster had darted off into the shadows and began to climb a stack of refuse, lantern in hand.

"Wait, where are you going?" Tony still wasn't coherent enough to think in a straight line, but he knew the rescue wasn't quite done yet, if that's what this really was.

"You can get yourself out now. If Boss Guido catches me down here, he'll transfer my little sis to the brothels for sure. That's the way he works. Me and your friend are even now, you be sure to tell him that, okay?"

Before Tony could ask anything else, the boy and his lamp vanished up a hole in the ceiling corner so small that a rat would have thought twice about pushing through it. His 'rescuer' was gone, and he was still tied at the ankles and his chest and arms to the back of the chair. After wondering at the vagrancy of chance and fate for a moment, he took the dagger from his lap and cut the cord binding his chest back. Then he cut his ankles free.

Both processes were time consuming and difficult in the dark, using nothing but a flimsy, dull dagger. It took so long, in fact, that by the time he finished, he was more or less completely recovered from the mild concussion that had laid him out who knows how long ago. When he was finally standing again, he confronted the next obstacle—the dark. Fumbling around, he got about three steps from his chair before he tripped over some junk and fell on his face. Whatever else they used this orphanage basement for, they also kept a bunch of mysterious clutter lying all over the floor. Tony had about a minute to curse messy gangsters and drag himself to his feet before he heard footsteps banging down stairs nearby, and instead occupied himself with panicking.

"…Don't understand why I have to check on the hostage…" muttered whoever was approaching, in the most petulant tone Tony had ever heard from an adult voice.

Fumbling in the dark, Tony's panicking brought him to the chair, which he promptly gripped by the leg. A sharp, adrenaline-fueled jerk separated the chair leg from the frame easily enough, and he quickly crawled through the dark until he found a wall to press his back against. Light arced into the space through the crack under the basement door, and Tony found that he was standing right next to it. Thanking his lucky stars, he got to his feet just in time for the door to swing open. The gangster held the lamp in, trying to illuminate as much as possible with the least effort, and leaned forward to get a better look into the shadows.

"_Turnabout is fair play_," Tony thought, and brought the chair leg down with all his might. The dull thud of impact was mixed with a wet crushing noise. The man fell, dropping his lamp, which bounced twice before shattering, spilling flaming oil across the basement.

The clutter turned out to be old furniture in various states of repair, probably stolen property waiting to be fenced or allocated to safe houses around the city. The oil hit a dusty old couch and lit it up like a pile of tinder. Tony's panic exploded far beyond what it had been as heat pressed on him like a physical force and he was driven back.

In seconds, his stunned eyes were looking at a terrifying blaze. The flames on the couch immediately spread to several upholstered chairs, wooden cabinets, and all the other old crap that had accumulated in the neglected storage space. Far more heart-stopping, it lit the ceiling above on fire too. The whole structure was a fire-trap, and it burned like it had been soaked in kerosene. Screams, both of men and children, began to echo down the stairs. Tony's heart felt like it would thunder to an explosive stop in his chest.

"By Dio… I think I've just burned down an orphanage…" he muttered, and then the gangster was stirring on the floor and his survival instinct kicked in. He ran up the stairs and out into a hall, finding a press of children and adults making for the door. In their panic, they took no notice of one more body, even if he was clutching a chair leg in one hand.

Out in the street, a crowd was forming to watch the building burn. This was the worst part of the dock-side slums, and there would be no fire team. Due to the building's almost unique clearance from its neighbors, a credit to the children that were supposed to have some play room in its ample front and side yards, there wouldn't even be any help from others hoping to keep the fire from spreading to their own buildings. It was pathetic, really, especially considering that the building was built right up against the lake—its back windows had a straight drop down to a canal edging the side of the city's extensive docks. It would not have been too difficult to form a bucket chain, but none could be bothered in this, the poorest part of the city. To them, the horrifying fire was just a rare form of entertainment.

Tony managed to sneak away through the confused and preoccupied crowds with little trouble… right up until he heard the pathetic, wailing cries for help. Turning back to look over the heads of the crowd, he followed all eyes to an upper window on the orphanage. It was venting a black smoke, and in the twilight, it was just possible to see the small child hanging out, gasping for fresh air. Abandoning all reason, the guilt-ridden herald moved back toward the crowd, pressing through it until he came out in front, close to the walkway leading through the yard to the orphanage doors.

"Hey—there he is!" a voice shouted from the press behind him, and the thrill of terror motivated him to break the pall of cowardice and indecision that had held him back from the act that every ounce of his conscience demanded. Without another thought, he dashed forward into the building.

The flames were raging on all sides, but Tony still managed to pick a survivable path to the stairs and reach the second floor. Burning timbers fell all around him and the floor threatened to give way with every step, but he made his way forward to the room he'd seen the child in. It was almost impossible to see or breathe in the hot, viscous black smoke, and so he crouched down and scooted through the second floor. In the room, a frantic search eventually revealed the child, a little girl wearing rags and clutching a frayed cloth doll, passed out near the window. Tony was heading to unconsciousness himself, and moved to make his way back. Exploding flames denied him that path in spectacular fashion, and so he went through the only open doorway.

Child in arms, he made his way through one blazing room after another. At length, his miserable, directionless odyssey brought him to another window. He leaned out to get a few gasps of fresh air, and found himself looking down at the murky waters of the canal. It didn't take him a moment to make the decision, and he jumped out, child clutched close, reveling in the water's cool embrace seconds later.

It was a rather desperate swim to the nearest dock, and an agony to haul the soaked child up onto it. Tony had just enough time to find that the little girl was still breathing before thundering feet and angry voices announced the fact that the gangsters had decided to pursue him, and had spotted his escape into the water. With an exhausted gasp, Tony dove back into the canal and swam strongly into the lengthening twilight shadows. Thrusting himself fully underwater, he did his best to disappear into the murky deeps.

When his lungs could take it no more, he surfaced, finding himself an impressive distance from the dock he'd just escaped. He was in the canal proper now, the solid stone foundation of the dock boardwalk on one side and an open stretch of water in the other. There was no sound of pursuit, so he set about looking for some way to climb out of the filthy, blood-chilling water. He'd just reached some kind of water-intake pipe for one of the city's poor-quarter wells when the sound of pursuing gangsters caught up with him. With nowhere to go, he ducked inside of the four-foot-high sluice pipe and sat chest-deep in the slimy water there.

"…is he damnit?" the voices approached until they were immediately above him. Tony cursed as he realized he'd trapped himself. He couldn't leave the pipe while they were watching the water just outside.

"I don't know!" shouted another voice, "why are we even bothering? He's escaped cleanly by now. Let's just go round up all our little snotlings and find another home to stick them in before they get it into their little skulls that they can try freelancing. I'm liable to lose a fortune for each bugger that slips away."

"Are you stupid or something? That guy came in with Boss Guido! If he's involved, the money wrapped up in that wimpy puke has got to be way more than your damn, filthy munchkin-herding. Besides, do you know what Boss Guido did to the last bunch that failed him? They still find pieces of them, now and then, when they move furniture or sweep under the carpets. Do you want a date with the meat-packing plants too?"

"Ah…"

"Exactly. Now, you stand here and watch out in case he comes back this way. The rest of us will split up and check around. It shouldn't be too hard to find a wringing-wet herald."

The sound of them breaking up to search was underscored by Tony's silent and furious cursing. If they left a man here, there was no way for him to escape the way he'd come. That only left the opposite direction, and the deep darkness that lay that way. Tony's skin crawled as he reluctantly examined the pipe. The ceiling was moving and making soft noises, and it took a moment before he realized that this was because of the solid carpet of cockroaches that lived up there. Meanwhile, the water was filthy with slime and the pipe's bottom was caked with unidentifiable muck and the hard, clam-like things that fed on it. Tony spent a moment wondering if living free was really worth it, and then the distinctive sound of a crossbow spring locking back outside the pipe decided that question for him.

Recovering the chair leg from where he'd stuck it through his belt, he used it as a guide as he quested forward through the darkness ahead. He found himself crawling through the mucky water almost happily in his effort to avoid the cockroaches mating and feasting in the mold above. After what seemed like an eternity of horror, Tony saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

When the pipe opened out, it was in some kind of pump room. Buckets attached to a chain moved in continual circuits on large gears, shifting water up onto a higher level. There was repair-access in the form of a ladder leading up to a door, and Tony said every prayer of thanks he knew, quietly praising Dio the Father under the lonesome shafts of twilight sun that arced down through a iron-grated window. Soaking wet and coated in filth he was happy he could not identify, Tony crawled up the access ladder and collapsed by the door.

Eventually, he rose and tried the door, which was locked from the other side. Sighing in dismay, the filthy, damp, wretched man leaned against the door to rest. Immediately, the rusted hinges cracked with a muffled popping noise and the door flopped open in a sudden bursting motion that sent Tony off balance and tumbling back onto his butt.

In the settling dust, Tony found himself in some kind of warehouse side-hall. The walls were stained and rotting and the high windows let in barely enough light to see the trash-strewn floors. There were ominous creaking noises, probably caused by the aged mechanism that pumped water up into the warehouse, and Tony realized that the place must somehow still be in use if that equipment was functioning.

Wandering down the hall, Tony found a door opening into the main part of the warehouse. One peek into the huge space, still vaguely lit by its high-set windows, and Tony knew he was in deeper than he'd ever bargained for. The warehouse was full of huge, ten-by-ten-by-ten menagerie cages, each one occupied to capacity by weak, sickly-looking zoras. The water pump let out into several troughs that ran parallel to the rows of box-cages, giving the aquatic people just enough moisture to keep them going, but not nearly enough to keep them healthy.

Tony felt his heart sting as he gazed out over the massed cages. There were at least twenty of the huge, bar-sided boxes, and they were stuffed with zoras. One was full of nothing but children, all making soft weeping noises as they reached into the water troughs through the bars of their cage and sloshed water over each other in weak, exhausted motions. Tony's eyes actually welled with tears at the sight, and he was so distracted that he almost forgot to hide back in the hallway when a loud argument broke out off to one side of the warehouse.

"Let me go! LET ME GO!" shouted a familiar female voice, and Tony was surprised and confused at the same time. He recognized Leeta's petulant, high-handed demands instantly, only he had no idea how she'd gotten here. Then he realized what all these zoras must be doing here, and his heart jumped up into his throat. They'd caught her! The same people that had made Leeta's people vanish had captured her too! And… the people that had caught her before… the _Mujerrouge_!

Tony's knees turned to water and he cowered beside the doorframe. Outside, he could hear the tussle between Leeta and her captors proceed toward the warehouse's back doors. Gathering his scattered courage, he listened to the scuffle move until it was outside his door, and then took a quick peek as they passed relatively nearby. Leeta was bound up in ropes and now gagged, held between two burly men while a beautiful young woman in a fine green gown supervised. They made their way to the back doors, passing a group of guards hanging out around a card table and then out into a shadowy alleyway. There was a carriage waiting there, and to Tony's absolute surprise, it was marked. What's more, it was marked with heraldry he recognized.

They couldn't possibly be that stupid, that arrogantly secure… could they? No one would use a carriage bearing their family crest to move a hostage to a ritual sacrifice ceremony. Because that was the only reason they'd be separating her out again, right? They were going to finish what they started! Tony sat there in hiding and died a little inside, unable to expose himself to the guards as the essentially innocent, if obnoxious, young woman was dragged off to almost certain death.

Then he remembered the crest on the carriage. A decade of intensive study had burned every noble seal in Careda and several other nations firmly onto his brain. That was the seal of the Batistas, a very powerful family from the coastal city of _Las Aguas_. They had a mansion estate on the outskirts of the city, an isolated place, perfect for a ritual in the darkness.

**Presently, The Streets of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

"… and that's why I figure I know where she must have been taken!" Tony was excited, still flushed from the unexpected ease with which he'd found his patron and heavy-hitter friend. "Everyone knows that the Red Women are actually the high-society elite. The Batistas are about as high-society as you can get, and they were definitely involved in her abduction! Their estate outside the city is the perfect place for them to stage a ritual!"

"Tony. Hey, Tony!" Link had to jerk back on him to slow down his headlong rush. When he had his attention, he marveled at the change that a little adventure had wrought in the formerly timid young man. "That's great, we'll get out there as soon as possible. It still doesn't explain how you freed the other zoras."

"Ah, right," they turned and began making their way toward the private stables where Link had stashed Epona, "that's easy enough to relate. Turns out the hallway I was hiding in led to their chamber pot. I just ambushed a guy when he came over on his way to relieve himself. He had keys, and the other guards were too absorbed in their card came to notice me unlocking their prisoners. By the time someone realized what was happening, they were sorely outnumbered, and turned tail. The rest of the zoras fled into the lake, and these two vowed to help save their princess. They speak a little Caredan, albeit with an awful Protugi accent. This one is Jillot, and this is Pono."

The two zoras looked up at the sound of their names, and Link nodded to them. He wasn't just exactly sure how two fish-out-of-water could help them, but he knew better than to underestimate them. That's how he kept defeating other people, after all. Anything was possible in this crazy world, and you could never tell how dangerous someone was by their appearance alone.

Tony bragged on shamelessly about his valiant rescue as they made their way through the deepening shadows. By the time they made it to the stables that Link had intended to use for a quick escape after locating Tony and Leeta, it was fully night time. It was a simple matter to flash gold at the stable manager and secure horses for his companions, and they were heading out of the city soon enough. According to Tony, it had been less than two hours since Leeta was abducted, but that was already too long. Unless his hunch was right about where that carriage was bound for, there would be no hope of saving her. It might already be too late.

_**Casa de Batista, **_**Romali Countryside, The Confederation of Careda**

Leeta sat, bound and gagged, scales dry and long, beautiful fins chafed to the point of cracking and flaking apart. Her knowledge of the journey here was limited, but she knew she couldn't be far from the city. Not that it mattered all that much, since there was absolutely no way she could possibly inform Link, or anyone else that might be able to help her. She'd only barely dodged the bullet last time, and now there was really no hope at all. The one cold comfort was that she had indeed discovered what became of her people.

All around her, mostly-naked human women were making preparations for some kind of ritual, perhaps the very same demonic invocation she'd been plucked away from before. Although she was, for the most part, too dehydrated and coiled in despair to manage coherence, she still managed to notice when they finished their preparations and began to chant. Almost instantly, the air of the situation altered from simple desperate fear to a much more focused terror for her life.

She couldn't understand the words they spoke, but she could feel an unnatural energy gathering in the air. The ritual site was a cleared space in a delightful garden, a circle surrounded by women wearing animal fetish headdresses with Leeta trussed up to the side. The circle was marked out with cleaned animal skulls and bloody entrails, and as they chanted, the grass in the center turned black. It was as though the space outlined by the animal guts and skulls was sucking down the light, transforming from a bit of manicured lawn into a pit, a dark void extending impossibly downward into infinity.

Paralyzed by fear, Leeta's blood seemed to coagulate in her veins, the sheer terror consuming her threatening to drive her into a faint. Small hands grabbed her around both wrists, and her heart skipped a beat. Painted women shoved her forward toward the pit, the tight ropes constricting her every effort to struggle, rendering her adrenaline-fueled thrashing totally moot. Within a few ponderous steps, she was looking down into the event-horizon of a bottomless pit of black that was darker than the mere absence of light. Her mouth went dry around the gag choking off her sobs of terror, because she could see _something_ moving down in the dark.

Leeta gradually became aware of a voice shouting something in a language that she didn't understand. Unable to take her eyes off the horrifying abyss, it was little more than a distraction, up until the ornate dagger appeared at her throat. The touch of cold steel drove Leeta's heart to a sudden stop, and she had a moment of sheer, cold clarity, a bracing moment before her life was snatched away. A bite at her jugular announced her end, but the end didn't come.

The bite was only a nick, but it bled profusely, a strong seeping of her bluish-red blood dribbling down along the blade and into the pit. The ritual was complete, and the black turned bright orange, revealing the thing that had been lurking there. Leeta beheld the thing from the black abyss, and the blood drained from her face as she fainted dead away. The ritual continued.

"**Blood of the ocean**," spoke a voice like the hissing of cockroaches and the baying of rabid beasts, underpinned by a psychic dissonance that scratched at the mind until one's head ached and the blood throbbed in one's temples. "**Blood of the ocean, blood of the earth, blood of man and beast, and now, I arise…**"

A pulse of fire that lacked heat erupted upward to bathe the women, then a plume of smoke as opaque as ink in water jetted out to tower high, high into the night sky. Out of the smoke came four great arms, one of knobby chitin like a crab's claw, one of hard horn like a turtle's shell, one of scales like a lizard's back, and one furred like a gorilla's. Tentacles like a thousand slimy, prehensile tails sprouted from the back and grew out in all directions, waving about in agitated spirals.

Then, at last, the smoke coalesced into a body. The upper torso was man-like, but trailed down into a reptilian abdomen of armored scales, finally ending in the heavy, centauroid body of elephantine proportions, complete with four stumpy legs and leathery skin. Its face was hideous, a combination of humanoid and beastly features that brooked no comparison. Its lipless mouth sneered with an endless array of serrated teeth beneath a hodge-podge, disorganized arrangement of a dozen or more mismatched eyes. It was well over thirty feet tall.

"Oh, Great One," the head priestess, Camilla Batista herself, addressed the demon. Many of her sister witches cowered, their imaginations unable to prepare them for the reality of what they were invoking. "We have completed the ritual as set down in the Grimoire Canimistal, and now we request that you complete the compact of blood."

"**Gurrhurrlllhurrhlllrhhh**," the demon coughed out a gurgling laugh that made the bowels tremble and almost tickle from the inside. It's many, many eyes swiveled to focus on the small woman in her elaborate mountain lion headdress. The baleful glare fell on her like a physical weight, and she felt herself quail away, despite a lifetime of privilege and the mandate to command that went with it. "**Little mortal, so arrogant, so certain of your own importance and personal power. Have you any concept in that tiny, limited mind of yours of what you have truly wrought here today?**"

"The spell… in the book…" she stumbled in the face of the concentrated malignancy focused on her, "It said—"

"**You have wrought your destruction,**" the demon informed them all.

The tentacles on its back quickly sprouted pincers like a scorpion's forelimbs and grew explosively outward, darting like striking snakes to grab women around their wastes or limbs, sometimes simply impaling them to achieve a grip. Many tried to use their animal powers to shapeshift and flee, but the very source of that power was here now, and it wanted their souls; the power would not come to them. Those it captured were drawn up into the mass of writhing, black, slime-dripping tentacles that encrusted its entire back, wrapped again and again in the nauseating limbs, and then drawn into the mass. They disappeared, smothered in the roiling black, sometimes broken, impaled, and dismembered, other times simply gobbled whole. In seconds, the flower of Careda's nobility was snuffed out, many of them girls barely out of their teens. Only the 'sacrifice' was spared, and the high witch, who the demon had saved for last.

"**What fools these mortals are—it never ceases to amaze.**" The demon held the woman up to its awful eyes, her whole body coiled in a single tentacle but for her face above the nose. By rights she should have passed out, but it was inside her mind now, and required her to experience every instant of her annihilation. "**The formula never changes, and yet it works again and again. One simply has to string them along… give them a taste of power… what was this to be tonight? Blood of the ocean… to give your cabal the power to shift into aquatic forms? A complete complement of blood, to earn you power unimaginable?**"

Camilla Batista moaned through the constriction that had already broken many of her bones, praying for oblivion to escape this horror, praying to the god she had forsaken when she chose the short path to power.

"**Did you know that my brother demons didn't believe that it would work this time? They were certain that your mortal memories, short as they are, could not hope to forget the destruction wrought by the last time you opened the channel to our world. 'No mortal with the ability to comprehend the gate magic will be foolish enough to actually invoke it,' was what they said. They simply don't understand—it's not mortal stupidity one must count on—it is greed… greed that blinds them to all prudence.**"

It laughed again, except that there were no intestines left nearby able to appreciate the disturbing effect of that awful noise.

"**For example, a mortal with all its faculties functioning would certainly have noticed that there were quite a number of pages missing from the Grimoire Canimistal. A mortal not blinded by greed would have been curious as to what was gone. In truth, those pages were strategically removed by a thrall of mine that worked for the great wizard who penned it. In this way, details… oh so important details… about the proper containment magic for a summoning like this were… shall we say...'lost.'**"

Finished with its gloating, the demon unwrapped the high witch from the knees up, only to pop her into its mouth the next instant and bite down with a sickening crunching noise. She was sliced in twain rather messily, and finished a moment later in a second bite. Finally done with its summoners, the demon turned to the forgotten zora girl lying trussed up near its enormous elephant feet. Tentacles quested down, lifting the princess gently upward on a platform formed of a dozen of the slimy appendages, until it could finally reach with its ape-like arm to bring her up to its face.

"**Awaken**," it commanded, and Leeta woke up. She wasn't certain what nightmare she'd fallen into, but the demon in her mind filled her in almost instantly. She desperately wanted to scream until her lungs burst, but the fiend pressed down on her psyche until there was little more than a drooling nubbin left. "**You… little fish… are the blood that binds me. As long as you live, nothing can banish me from this plane. Nothing but the sun. And wouldn't you know—I require only a few score souls to construct a spell that will blot out that accursed orb quite totally, and steal even the dawn from these mortals. In the meantime, I think we should travel together.**"

Chuckling foully, the demon pressed the tiny zora to its chest where a man's heart might be. The obsidian flesh absorbed her, parting like gelatin to suck her down, then solidifying. Only her face remained above the surface, strands oozing out to coat it in a gruesome mask, and to hold open her eyes. She was only marginally conscious, but the sliver that remained was the one able to feel pain and horror, and the demon didn't want her to miss out on what hell she was party to creating.

"**Now… where to find souls for my larder? Ah!" the demon peered over toward the torch-lit city on the lakefront, its massive arms flexing in delight. "A mortal city, how very convenient. My minions, come!**"

At the command, the tentacles on its back swirled, and the place underneath that had consumed the _Mujerrouge_ parted, bulged, and gave birth to three unique horrors. The first was a gigantic bird, big as an ox. It looked somewhat like an owl, but bloated and lined with toothsome maws in unusual places, and instead of eyes it had two female faces. The second was a great cat, half again as large as the biggest horse. Its black fur was done over with jagged neon-blue lightning bolt patterns that had no place on an animal, and the chest below its throat bore three sets of long-lashed lady's eyes in a triangular pattern. Finally, there was a crocodilian horror easily thirty feet from nose to tail tip. It looked quite ordinary, if huge and powerful, until it opened it's eight-foot-long maw and revealed a mouth full of barbed tendrils surrounding a tongue-like appendage with a woman's head on the end.

"**Go forth, my darklings, and find for me the souls I require. And remember to start with the children. The innocent, untainted souls are much better material for death-force conjuring**."

Obediently, the three great terrors took off into the night.

**Romali City Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

The strange party of riders lead by Link had only just passed through Romali's rusted-open, lightly-guarded city gates when the demonic ritual completed. Link was actually musing about the different quality of fortification maintenance between Ghent and Careda and the possible causes when something happened that had not occurred since he was only a child. He fell out of his saddle without being knocked out.

Specifically, the reason he fell was because his hand had exploded with radiant heat—his left hand. It didn't exactly hurt, but it was a huge shock, and it threw his senses into vertigo and made all his muscles go limp. He fell from the saddle like a wet noodle and landed with a thump on his back. When the episode passed, his recovery was severely impaired by the impossible noise Arrika was making on the inside of his skull.

"_Aaahhhhg!_" she shouted, and then cursed in a masterfully unladylike way. "_Why is this happening _now_? I knew those 'Red Women' were dabbling, but that… that was…_"

"What was that?" Link said, but out loud. He was peeling himself off the ground, noticing quite unhappily the unique new way in which his Triforce stigmata throbbed in his palm.

"_You don't know_?" Arrika gaped, but recovered, "_of course you don't know, you're just a child. I fear it gets harder to remember that with every intermingling of our powers_."

"What? And… what?" Link asked. But there was no time for that, as he was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of intense urgency. His legs started him moving forward as his heart rate peaked and his muscles throbbed with barely-restrained tension. "Arrika, what's going on?"

By now the others had turned back to check on him. He waved them away as he sprang onto Epona's back from a standing start, surprising even himself. He felt light, loose, and somehow a great deal less calm and subdued than he was accustomed to, and he knew his frustratingly cryptic companion had the answer.

"_It was the call of duty, so to speak. A demon has penetrated into our plane of existence, one of the high fiends, by the feel, and close besides. What you felt was the god-artifact integrated into your essence responding to its first purpose, the use for which we were all originally intended, before the Divos changed everything_."

Link felt the truth of that, even as the hair started to stand up all over his body. He could feel something, something quite unlike the sense of quickening excitement that danger had brought so many times before. It was a strange chill, a weight in the pit of his stomach, and a dryness to his mouth, all quite unusual in his experience.

"What about the thing in Ghent? It was nothing like this!" Link tried to control his heart rate and calm his nerves, but nothing seemed to work. He was on pins and needles, ever nerve raw and every synapse poised to rocket him into action.

"_That? It was just an elemental, a dark thing from the deep places in the world. It was puffed up by centuries of black magic and human sacrifice to its name, but it wasn't the _adversary_. Nothing from our world compares to them_." Arrika spoke on, but she, too, sounded strangely afflicted.

"_At the start, when creation was done, the presence of order and structure in our reality caused a sympathetic response in the nether hells, and a form of… anti-life… rose parallel to our world. Anti-life gave rise to anti-gods, along a perverse reflection of the natural laws regulated by the Source and its first servants, the Divos. This was the first betrayal, though none of us knew it, allowing the demons to exist was the first step in the Divos' plot, and almost doomed all of existence. Still, the gods had no inkling of their machinations. They detected this threat, and as their presence faded from the lands they had created, they dedicated the last of their powers to produce weapons that would protect what they had wrought from its antithesis_."

Link was acutely aware of Arrika's story, but he was also aware that there was something coming. Out on the road, which was clogged with merchant traffic, even at this hour, torches were starting to wink out. Darkness spread forward along the long strand of carts and through the small, peripheral structures that defied defense ordinances to set up outside the walls. The sheet of impenetrable night started to grow ever faster, and as it approached, it became laced with screams.

"_The five gods of mankind gave their forces to Smith, the artificer god that endowed all of humanity with their infamous ingenuity, but had no mortal creations to worship his memory. He made demands, demands that everyone else felt obligated to obey under the circumstances. At his behest, each of the five First Civilizations gave up its finest daughter in sacrifice, and my family was pounded out of the heartstuff of the sun, bound in purest souls to ensure guardians that would stand for eternity_."

"Back to city!" Link snapped at his three companions, urging Epona toward the falling curtain of night, very much against her horsy instincts. They were all extremely clumsy horsemen—two of them were part fish, after all—and they fumbled to complete even a simple about-face. Fortunately, their horses had not Epona's discipline, and broke into a run back toward the city as the dark came in. At length, even Link's longtime companion couldn't take it, and Link was forced to dismount again and let her flee, all the while possessed of the strangest urge to turn from that darkness and follow her.

"_Your Hylian Goddesses, always the non-conformists, decided to do it differently. They eschewed Smith, and instead developed a way to combine their disparate forces into their mortal creations. To placate father, they did commission a Holy Avenger to arm their civilization against evil, but theirs was a totally different approach to blocking out the darkness. In that way, they foiled the Divos' plans, and there was a ray of hope when they betrayed us all._"

"While this history lesson is both pretty cool and greatly appreciated," Link muttered, almost overpowered by the indescribable sensation throbbing through his body, "I think we need to deal with the matter at hand here."

The darkness was close, it would be upon them in moments. People fleeing from it streamed around him and into the city, alarms were rising from the walls, bells ringing, torches lighting, but mostly, panic reigned. Again, the urge to join them was both powerful and mysterious in the young hero.

"_That sensation, Link? That's _fear," Arrika informed him. "_I feel it too. I'll wager you've not felt its like before, considering your patron's guiding aspect. Still, it's refreshing to have a partner whose spine I don't have to squander my own power in stiffening. Trust me, without your god's favor, you'd be as useless as the rest of these mortals. Even with it, you'll not avoid that creeping terror. They are our doom, Link, their existence embodies no purpose but to end ours, to make us suffer, and then make us nothing_._ They are like no other opponent simply because they cannot be satisfied with riches or territory, our annihilation is their entire reason for existing._"

The dark would be on them in the next moment.

"_There is a ray of hope, though. You see, we, you and I, are also _their_ doom_." She quieted for a moment, "_Now, the sword_."

In a flash, Link drew her sword and was compelled to hold it aloft. It unleashed a flash of light that washed like a gentle balm over his eyes, but stared out furiously into the darkness, the glaring eye of an angry god. There, lit in stark relief, was a menagerie from an unclean mind. They hissed and cowered as the light burned at them, but the vast sea of oily black flesh in infinite bestial forms did not retreat, even as their bodies smoked and scarred under the assault.

The light repelled them for a long moment, but it could not stop them. Out of the great boiling sea of monsters came a thing like a lion the size of a rhinoceros. The light didn't seem to bother it in the slightest, and as they watched, ten or twenty more of the beastly shadow-creatures sprang off its body as easily as if it was shedding fur. It was their source, and perhaps the key to their will. Link realized what his target for now should become in that single glance.

On the other hand, the creature knew an obstacle to its objective when it saw one, and it was possessed of more intellect that anyone might have anticipated. At some silent command, the creatures it generated so continually parted around Link to rush around the flanks toward the city's other entry gates. Link couldn't cover them all. At the same time, a flock of evil-looking black birds disturbed the night sky, bypassing the stunned and terrified guards on the walls to flock into the city like an airborne swarm of razor-sharp saw blades. Unknown to all, the lake had already been infested with things to make the largest octarock look like a harmless guppy, led by the crocodile that could eat a rowboat in a single bite.

"_Link, they're trying to avoid you_," Arrika stated the obvious, "_they want the mortals and their souls for the demon's death magic. You have to_—"

"I know!" Link cut her off, slinging her sword around in an arc that drew a line through the great cat-beast. The sword generated a cutting wave that flashed out invisibly and incinerated a line of unmaking at roughly four feet off the ground. A great mass of the darkling minions erupted into flames as they were cloven in twain, but even that huge mass of casualties was not enough to slow the mindless creatures as they swarmed away from him. As for the head beast, the wave parted around it like a caressing breeze, barely even ruffling its neon fur.

"_Link! Listen_!" Arrika used her position on the inside of his skull to drill through his combat focus. "_Killing the shade minions is futile; slay the big one to make them all vanish. But, it's hardened against my magic. You must get to grips with it to have any effect_!"

"Right…" the beast was already retreating at a clip that the finest racing horse would envy, and Link drew out his bow. "Will—"

"_These minions seem to be made of mortal flesh. Mundane weapons will probably harm them like any other beast. And, even if they don't, all I need is a dip into its flesh and I should be able to formulate a banishing seal_."

Link smiled a grim smile. He pulled an arrow tied to a bomb from the quiver where he kept his prepared munitions, drew it back along his composite beauty, and lit it by dragging the steel of his gauntlet along a piece of flint he'd glued to bow shaft, sending a spray of sparks to the arrowhead. Even as the distance opened, he barely needed to aim. An extra second was needed to compensate for the weight of the bomb on the missile, and then he let fly.

At last, the thing had revealed a very simple weakness. While it's human-like intellect had led it to try avoiding Link with its superior mobility, it lacked the simple animal instinct that was fleeing with serpentine motion. It ran in a straight line along the curve of the wall, and so it was child's play to lead the shot. The explosive arrow came down in the joint between its hip and spine, lingered for an instant, and exploded. In a flash and puff of smoke, the back left leg went flying off and the creature was thrown to the ground.

Capitalizing, Link fired another arrow, aiming high to get the weighty bomb over the big gap between them. This time, it was absorbed by the bat-bird-things that clogged the skies, exploding far short of the target, and Link realized they were on to him again. Still, opportunity was knocking. He plucked Arrika's sword from the dirt, its glow brighter than even the master sword conjoined to the twilight god, and sprinted toward the downed opponent with blood on his mind. The fear, so startlingly unusual, had already transformed into an entirely new form of voracious bloodlust. There was no thought on his mind but claiming the beast's head, the terrible need to destroy the source of his fear preying upon the basest of human instincts.

It knew its bane approached, but it was far from ready to give up, and it expelled a small army of the shade-creatures in Link's direction as it attempted to limp away. Any delay to Link was more time for its other minions to penetrate the city and begin claiming lives. Its own existence was of no concern, as long as the mandate of its dark creator was obeyed. Already the birds and sea-beasts were inside and distributing death with exceptional, indiscriminate ferocity. The sky glowed with flames, and there was a symphony of catastrophic, riotous panic rising with the smoke. Death had come to Romali.

Link swept Arrika's sword along a horizontal line, then blinked as he felt the sword take on a life of its own. Arrika used her sword and his arm and drew an arcing rose on the air, invisible beams obliterated the thing's reinforcements, leaving tattered and burning fragments littered across the grassy Caredan lowlands. Once again, the dark force animating the lion-creature repelled the beams, but it was no longer fast enough to outrun Link. Its cannon-fodder ground away, Link slipped Arrika's sword into the scabbard on his back and leaned down, sprinting with everything he had.

At the last moment, the beast sprung around and reared on its abbreviated haunches, the awful eyes upon its breast flared with rage and dark magic, and its cannonball-sized paws grew claws like hooked daggers. Link ducked its first strike and drew Arrika's sword directly into a slashing attack, utilizing the quick-draw taught to him by the Hylian Ghost Warrior. Where the beams had breezed harmlessly over the demon, Arrika's sword itself blasted at its flesh with explosive force, knocking a hunk out of its ribcage three times the width of the blade.

Link felt a thrill of victory, but it was premature. The monster didn't seem to feel the wound, and the gash bled black ooze, but revealed nothing inside its flesh but a solidly-packed gel-like substance. Link had just enough time to realize that the thing was immune to pain and lacked vital organs before its other paw struck. Calculating from its last attack, Link dodged, but found himself flying through the air, his chest on fire and his new armor ringing, when the paw moved at something like three times its previous speed.

Link was stunned. It was the shrewdest move he'd ever seen a monster make. As he somersaulted through the air, his adrenaline-charged brain stretching out every second, he considered the simple beauty of the strategy. It suckered him in with a pulled punch, let him square up and deal a less-than-deadly blow, and then decked him. Four moderate stab wounds had penetrated his armor for superficial damage, but the real damage was to his pride. He hadn't taken a shot like that from a monster since the first time he'd crawled into a dungeon and found out that twilight magic could make big, big beasties. Sure, he'd been wounded before, in ambushes and when his defenses were saturated, but the damn thing had downright snookered him.

That's all he had time to think before the ground rushed up at him. He did a handspring, then dug in his feet when they found the soil again. Catapulting out of his crouch, he chucked a bomb at it, and then pulled out his bow. It sprang away from the bomb, and he fired while it was airborne and unable to dodge. Link sank half a dozen arrows into its chest, penetrating each of the six eyes with pinpoint precision. When it landed, it was roaring, disoriented for a moment, but by the time the bomb went off and shook the plains, six new eyes had sprouted between the protruding arrow shafts.

"What does it take to slow this thing down?" Link asked, as it once again drew itself up to fend him off. He thought about shooting another explosive directly into it, but the moment he did, a cloud of the bat-things bringing the sky to life appeared to halo around its head.

"_It's an amorph type, disguised in that animist shape_," Arrika drew from a well of experience so much larger than his own, it didn't bear comparison. "_We could dismember it all day, but only a banishing force will de-animate its mass and loose its hold on its minions_."

"Great… I don't know how to do that."

"_Leave it to me. You gave me what I needed—that taste of its flesh was enough to determine its essential coherence pattern. The demon-magic that allows the thing to persist in our reality should be simple enough to undo now. Watch._"

Link stowed his bow away and watched. Arrika's phantom stepped forward out of his body, drawing her sword off his back in the same disconcerting motion. Almost instantly, she began to move the sword faster than the eye could follow, so fast that it kicked up a windstorm that Link had to lean into. A symbol appeared on the air in the glowing afterimage, endlessly intricate and with no definite shape, it grew in seemingly random directions. Finally, the sword stopped stock still, pointing at the demon-creature, but the image on the air remained. The monster scrambled, recognizing its destruction, but it could only limp on its three legs.

The world pulsed, the glowing symbol evaporated inward to enliven the sword with an ever brighter glow, and a solid beam shot out of its tip and blazed a hole to the core of the lion-beast. Arrika opened her mouth and made a sound that might have been a word, or might have been the chiming of a bell. Either way, its utterance was enough to make the monster wink out of existence. One moment it was there, the next, it, the beam, and all its lingering minions had all been erased. Even the sundered remains of the defeated evaporated from the ground, leaving no trace they had ever existed but for the gashes on Link's chest.

"_Heh_," Arrika chuckled as she turned from the trampled battlefield and faced Link, showing a smile that betrayed her intense age on that childish visage, "_I've still got it. All the curses and endless wasting centuries of dormancy in the universe aren't enough to dull this sword arm_." Link gave her a small, genuinely impressed round of applause as she walked up and phased back into him, reaching up and sliding her sword back onto his shoulder before she melted away.

"Good work, but there's still some kind of bird-creature, if these shadow-keats-things are any indication." Link turned to look back at the city, which was burning merrily away, illuminating a sky full of terrifying, swirling clouds of demon-minions. The screams and sounds of chaos and rioting were intense, even as they were blocked by the city walls. Link's chest constricted with a hot pain as he imagined the awful carnage that must be going on inside.

"_Are you kidding_?" Arrika sounded disgusted, and Link snapped back to the moment. He was ready to argue, but she overrode him. "_Link, you don't have time to be chasing down every minion cast-off this demon makes—you have to go for the demon itself. Otherwise he'll just start making more. Besides, if we can bag the big boy, all of this stops immediately. All we have to_—"

"_**What do we have here**_?" spoke a voice that was not Arrika's but was still on the inside of his head. Arrika cursed, said something about 'shield' and then her voice was drowned out by agony. The burning rooted from the base of Link's skull and spread down his spine to every limit of his extremities. Unconsciousness was approaching with alarming speed, the pain so intense that he couldn't even unclench his jaw to scream, and all he could think of was 'shield.'

In his mind's eye, he saw his trusty old Hylian shield, the only piece of equipment manufactured in Hyrule that was well known to be superior in quality. Almost the same instant that image appeared in his head, the pain stopped, so suddenly it was like the flip of a switch. Link's eyes fluttered open, and he looked down at his body, a little surprised to find it all in one piece.

"Huh?" he mumbled, but a sudden thundering in the soil distracted him quite totally from wondering about it. There was something very, very big approaching out of the nighttime shadows.

"_That was a mental assault, the prelude to a mental domination_," Arrika answered him anyway, "_good work shielding yourself. I… wasn't ready for that direct of an attack. Another moment and it would have been inside you, controlling your mind, directing you like a puppet. I'd… I'd have been forced to kill you_."

"No time for that—look at it!" Link found himself genuinely disgusted by the shape stepping forward into the light cast over the walls from the burning city. "What hell spawned that thing?"

"_Ah_…" Arrika hummed, taking in the mammoth centaur-like form, "_probably the animist hell. It's hard to say, with the way those chaotic planes shift, combine, and transform. It syncs with what you told me about the red women and the powers they were bargaining for. Be on your guard. This is no minion_."

"I kinda figured…" Link's snarky comeback faded as the demon stalked up. Its arms had been crossed over its chest as it approached, and it spread them open as it glared down at them with a mismatched gallery of eyes. "Eh…"

"**Once again… I wonder what it is that has interrupted my little party**." The demon glared, and Link could feel it like a weight pressing down on him, locking him to the spot. The hero found himself literally quaking in his boots, if only a little bit, but far worse, he was otherwise unable to move a muscle. As he watched, the demon knelt on its front elephant knees, then leaned its huge torso over, landing on its lower set of arms, then leaned over again and landed on its upper set of arms, growing closer and closer like a falling tower that Link couldn't move to avoid. When it finally finished, its vast face with its dozens of eyes was only a few feet away, and its jagged-toothed maw was slobbering a trail of ooze nearly to Link's feet. "**Let us take a look**."

Arrika was silent, a chill centered in Link's brain, just as paralyzed as him. It was a delicate paralysis, Link felt certain they could break it and smash the demon's face in, if only it would stop staring at him and attack. As it was, it was a standoff, he couldn't force himself to move as long as it sat back and watched without aggression.

"_Damn… soul… lock…_" Arrika ground out the words, and the thing opened its mouth. Thirty or so tongues, each one several inches thick and coated in fish-hook barbs, trailed out to taste the air in front of Link. Still paralyzed, Link had to just stand there and take it as they got far, far too close for comfort. And yet, not a single drop of slobber oozed down to touch him and break the standoff.

"**Hurllghrullharullhrrll**," the thing gurgled a laugh, drawing its tongues back in. Its great teeth clacked shut, and the head drew away to give the eyes a better look. Link railed against the forces holding him still, but nothing seemed to work. "**Is this it? Is this all the gods could maneuver against me? A single trineling, and the sad, phantasmal remnant of an archangel? Truly, the end of mortal days draws ever closer, when the sentinels of humankind are reduced to this paltry showing**."

Link was bursting from the inside out, the strain of his effort to break the paralysis inflaming his body all over, nearly as painful as the demon's mental assault. Still, he did not budge, and now the demon was talking again.

"**I'm sure you ache to get to grips with me, little sentinels, but that is not to be. My soul lock will not break so long as you are undisturbed, and I see no reason to loose you with so many defenseless victims just waiting for my minions' sweet ministrations. Indeed, I feel it is far better that you stand**—"

Link tuned out the demon's gloating, or rather, the world went silent around him, drowned out by the sound of wind roaring in his ears. High on the demon's chest, so close as it leaned in at him, was a face he couldn't help but recognize. In all the furious action, he'd nearly forgotten about Leeta, and now… it was too late…

"_Link_!" Arrika was suddenly released from the demon's spell, "_what's going on_?"

"It's time to go to work," Link said. He seemed to be unaware of the fact that his entire body had been enveloped in a golden glow, or that his left hand was glowing bright enough to make Arrika's sword look like a sputtering candle.

"**AAHHHGGRRR**!" the demon bellowed, slapping the ground to throw itself back up into a standing position in a thunderous rush. "**So there's more to you than the average trineling! Very well, little sentinels. I will exert myself toward your destruction****!**"

Link said nothing. Arrika's sword was in his hand the next moment, and its lighthouse-bright glow intensified fivefold as he held it, making it look several times larger and actually too bright to look at. It blazed, but the demon gave no ground, and started to emanate an aura of decay that threatened to bear down and snuff out the light. Though the odds had been evened somewhat, the outcome of this clash was far from guaranteed.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

HA! Now that is a story that gets my blood pumping, rather than boring me to the point of agony. Shall we go ahead and jump the shark now?


	21. Requiem for Romali p2

**The Golden Power: Book 2**

**Chapter 7: Requiem for Romali, Part 2**

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda flinched, so much so that all of her ministers noticed, and the one delivering his report stopped to ask if she was alright. With a mild exertion of her power, she convinced them it was but a cramp from all the orders she'd been drafting lately. From there, it was child's play to manipulate them into ending the night's governing conference early, leaving them certain it was their own idea. Meanwhile, she was simply glad to usher them out of her apartments before the throbbing ache in her left hand could become any more intense. When the glow from her Triforce stigmata became so bright that it started to show through her elbow-length gloves, she knew something extremely serious was afoot. With a call to the armed men outside her suite doors, she left orders to turn away all visitors and servants, and then secured the courtesy lock. Her guards could still get in during an emergency, but she had her privacy for now.

With a small spell and a wave of her hand, Zelda dimmed all the room's lamps, then drew her whispering stone out of her dress and let it dangle free. She soon occupied the chair before her desk, and the stone became the center of focus for all three cycles chugging away in her mind. Magic began to spill out from her fingertips, activating the newest feature she'd been working on.

In moments, Zelda was presented a full audio and video representation of the surroundings of the stone's mate, and what she found took her breath away. Romali was burning, and Link was… well… radiant.

Unbeknownst to her, hundreds of miles away, a young Gerudo sorceress was experiencing a similar sensation in her hand. It was the dead of night there, and she slept through it for now. That could not last, and there was no magic she could produce that would explain to her why her hand was quickly taking on the aspect of a star.

**Streets of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Tony rushed back through the gate and into the city, respecting Link's command and the powerful instinctual terror that drove both him and his mount to have sturdy walls between them and all the horrible, scary, _whatevers_ that lurked out in the darkness. Once inside the fortified boundary, it was all he could do to leap off the horse before it went mad with fear and galloped away through the streets. Jillot and Pono, his zora allies, managed to survive their horse problems as well, despite their inexperience with that mode of transportation, but all signs pointed to that feat being a short-lived victory.

There was energy in the air, tailing in on the edge of that darkness that had drenched the countryside outside the walls. A chilling terror crept up Tony's spine, and everywhere around him, the lamp-lit city nightlife seemed to react to that same total, directionless horror. People stopped where they stood, paralyzing skeins of paranoia draped across their psyches, forcing them to look around, eyes unseeing, as they were enthralled by bone-chilling fear. There was a moment of stillness, and then the demon-birds swooped down in a solid cloud.

Tony was as frozen as the rest, his body unwilling to respond as he watched a shroud of swarming bat-bird-things fall upon everyone in the streets simultaneously. A weight struck him in the side, knocking him to the street, but he was so focused on the carnage before his eyes that he didn't even notice his own life being saved. All around him, people flailed, the little buzz-saws attached to their throats, their faces, every vital artery they could reach, and then they started to flail, using their jagged, spine-coated bodies in exactly the way one might imagine. Blood sprayed in all directions, people screamed as they died, beasts burrowing into their flesh, opening their veins, wounding them in a dozen fatal places at once.

Particularly nearby screaming finally drew Tony's attention, and he found that the thing which had knocked him aside was Pono. The zora had tried to get him out of the way of a small flock of the demon birds, only to become their new target. He was thrashing around a few feet away, trying to shed his coating of biting sawblades to no effect. Too horrified to move, Tony watched as they dug and cut into his recent acquaintance, the spasmodic flailing of the dying zora etched into his memory as only life's true horrors ever are.

They finished with Pono in one last, blood-spraying assault, and then sprang back up to hover in the air. Their attentions turned to the target they'd been denied only moments ago. Tony tried to scramble backward, but crashed directly into a locked storefront, spilling an unlit lamp to shatter nearby on the cobblestones. His survival instinct flared to life, and the chair leg and short sword found their way out of his belt in a nearly miraculous motion.

When they came for him, Tony swept both weapons in a wild, untrained flailing motion, catching two with the wide chair leg and none with the stolen sword. The moment they were struck, the flimsy creatures disintegrated, their danger lying more in their mobility and numbers than their individual durability. However, three more were not stopped, and they latched onto Tony's chest at the heart, his throat, and his leg near the crotch.

Dropping everything, Tony grabbed the one at his throat and ripped it off, dashing it against the cobblestones, but cutting his hand horribly. In the same moment, his other fist crashed down on his own crotch, bashing the other one to ooze, with quite a bit of agonizing collateral damage. Still, the one preparing to saw a hole in his chest actually managed to dig in its little fishhook-claws.

Tony pounded on it, even as it started to thrash, slicing him open, but its body solidified now that it had locked in. It tore a deep hole in his chest, and Tony screamed his agony as he felt it dig deeper, actually able to sense every motion as it burrowed deeper into his body. Adrenaline and shock combined to chase away the pain, and Tony's eyes dilated with manic fury. He grabbed the little bastard with his damaged hand and yanked, ignoring the way its barbed thrashing lacerated his fingers, continuing to pull until its fish hooks ripped right out of his body. He moved to cast it away, only to find that it was now attached to his hand. In seconds, it would dig a hole straight through his palm—already the bone was showing through the blood. Addled by panic, the aura of fear surrounding the city, and his own pain, Tony reverted to a more primitive state.

"RAAARRHHHGGG!" He roared as he brought his hand to his mouth and bit down on the little creature ferociously, then started gnaw. It was hard as a stone, but Tony's jaw just tightened until a cracking noise announced his teeth had broken. His mouth flooded with blood, but also black ooze, the creature's thrashing coming to a sudden stop as its little body was smashed between Tony's mandibles.

Tony had a moment of relative clarity as he escaped immediate danger. All around him, people were rushing into buildings, fighting off the swarming creatures, or lying about in dismembered heaps of gore. It was an image from the deepest hell, and Tony, now somewhat delusional, tried to brush it away with a weak, dispirited wave of his arm. The motion dragged his wrist over the cobblestone streets, striking sparks from his bracelet, a rosary set bearing a Star of Dio, his god. The sparks lit the lantern oil he'd spilled, setting the storefront on fire in an instantaneous booming flash. Every bat-thing touched by the bright light of the open flames evaporated instantly, saving a dozen lives in one fell swoop.

Tony witnessed the miraculous turn of events, and found himself staring at his Star of Dio as the firelight danced over its tarnished surface. His mind, already addled by the demonic aura tormenting the entire city and the horror of what he'd just experienced, crumbled to mush, and then re-formed. He began to giggle uncontrollably as he used his good hand to rip off his shirt. One strip of cloth went to bandage the hemorrhaging in his ruined hand, the next was wrapped around the end of his lucky chair-leg. He dipped it into the still-burning oil and soaked the tip, creating a durable torch.

"_In nomine Pater_," he shouted in _Lingua_, the language of Dio's clergy, while brandishing the torch wildly, "_laus ignis_!"

Laughing like the madman he'd become, he dashed to the nearest streetlamp and bashed open its oil reservoir with one heroic overhand swing. Burning fluid sprayed out like dragon's breath, splashing across another storefront and lighting it up like a stack of tinder. Another great mass of the bat-things fled or were evaporated, and now people began to catch on, aided somewhat by Tony's sudden penchant for zealous, utterly mad preaching. Also gripped by a certain kind of madness, people began to fall in all around him, a riot of truly gigantic proportions taking up torches made from whatever came to hand. The fire spread as the riot spread, and the demons were turned back. The tide of murder from the skies was stemmed for the moment, but now the city descended into madness and fire.

**Outside Romali's Eastern Gate, The Confederation of Careda**

Link stood in the unnatural dark of the starless, moonless landscape, a world of night lit only by the burning city and the few watch lamps at his back that had been spared when he repelled the demon's land invasion. He stood in that darkness, and the golden light flowing out of his hand, every inch of his body, and the heart of a furnace that was Arrika's sword, repelled it like he was his own independent sun at the precipice of an oily black void. The demon, all thirty feet of him, loomed up out of that darkness, reflecting that light off of its thousand boneless tentacle limbs and its four great bestial arms. Its body had become shrouded in living, moving darkness—dark like clouds of ink in water. But still, its arms and many eyes could be picked out of that enchanted black void, every inch of exposed flesh radiating menace as palpable as a grating stench.

"**You're aura is quite impressive, Trineling**," the demon's voice throbbed in Link's ears, although it was blessedly restrained to _only_ his ears, Arrika keeping it out of his brain, at least. "**However, you really must reconsider this foolhardy endeavor. The witches have been feeding me on blood for half a human lifetime, bartering for the little tricks of power that are my prerogative to grant. I have imbibed the life force of a prince of humans, of royalty of the deep earth and vast sea, and of every beastly creature that walks these benighted riverlands. Tonight, my power is at zenith! And you, you are but a third, a part missing its mates! Your ally of the blade is a wasted shadow, clinging to that starsteel like the soul-sucking wraith she and her kin have always been. Do you really imagine to challenge me?**"

"_Does this guy ever shut up_?" Link thought to Arrika, his every sense alive and sizzling at far greater-than-human acuity, searching out the target. Arrika gave a harsh chuckle into his mind.

"_It's… trying to distract me._" Arrika sounded preoccupied in the extreme, "_The talking is… a component of a new soul-lock…_" She paused for a moment, and there was an incomprehensible jumble of noise/thoughts for a long moment, making Link wince. "_Got it… I think_." Arrika seemed to fade in and out for a moment, almost difficult to hear over the sound of the demon's relentless tirade.

"_It's so damn strong!_" she complained, when she regained composure. "_This golden power of yours… it's just barely enough to hold it off on the psychic front! As for its ranting, put it down to how evil these freaks really are. The magic only requires that it make rhythmic sounds. The obnoxious dialogue is just to torment us that much more. Anyway, just be happy it isn't a deceiver demon—they have thirteen mouths, and we'd be getting this in chorus_."

"_Is that really important to be sharing right now? We need to destroy this thing! Lives are at stake!_" Link found himself disproportionately annoyed by her bizarre digression, and had to check himself_. _He was sweating profusely despite the fact that he'd hardly begun to fight, and his pulse was thundering uncontrollably in his chest. The oddness of it caught him up short, even as his reprimand seemed to snap Arrika back to the present.

"_Rrr,_" Arrika made a noise similar to the grinding of teeth, adding a few curse words in languages forgotten by time. "_It's switched to a new kind of attack! Distracting me… disorganizing my thoughts… Gah! It hasn't been this bad since that time under the Synpatrica star-current, the Battle of Ten Nightlords, I think it was called. It was me and Beatrix and Kumoko—_"

"_Arrika, you have to concentrate! Keep it together_!" Link realized he'd lost his grasp on the situation, but also that Arrika was doing everything in her power to keep the demon from doing to him what it was doing to her. "_Just hold on a little longer! Once I've located its weak spot, _then_ we'll find out how talkative it's feeling_."

The demon droned on and on, apparently happy to wax endlessly about its superiority, its intentions for the sadistic torture of every soul it collected, and every sub-par feature it could identify or fabricate about Link and Arrika. Link continued to examine it, wondering if this or that feature still visible under its cloak of darkness might be a vulnerability. He wasn't having any luck at all finding the usual glowing spot to target with his sword, and it was starting to get a little disconcerting. Arrika was silent for a moment. Something of what he'd said triggered her scattered mind along a new tangent.

"_Weak point_?" she finally managed, actually sounding a bit more coherent, "_are you serious? You're waiting to find its weak point_?"

"_Unless you have a suggestion_?"

"_For a greater demon, you expose it to the sunlight, an option we certainly don't have. In six hours, this thing could destroy the whole of Careda. The only other way is to slay the blood that binds it here. I could only guess that it would be… you know…_"

She didn't have to say it. Somehow, Link had already known that Leeta had something to do with the demon's presence. It wasn't exactly hard to add up the sequence of events. Still, there had to be some other way to banish the demon short of dawn or Leeta's demise.

"_Listen, Arrika. Every giant monster I've ever faced had some kind of vulnerable spot_," Link explained, oblivious to, or perhaps ignoring her skepticism. Although he continued to search, he was unable to check her distraction this time. He found his mouth moving of its own accord, even as he attempted to focus his entire being on the adversary. "_If you pierce something's 'weak point' a dozen or so times, it'll die, no matter how big it is_._ I could tell you some stories-_"

"_Wha—oh…_" Arrika paused in her protest as the mists of eternity cleared somewhat, and she began to recall more of what she knew about the Hylian Trinity. "_That's got to be 'karnak,'_" Arrika told him, "_it's just the same as back then. The Hero of Courage, the first one, had that same power. Karnak is a very powerful ability, Link, a power of life, of the body, of fundament. It doesn't come from the gods._"

Link felt his attention slide again, this time not only as a product of the demon's mental projection seeping through Arrika's guard. This tangent they'd spun off on, this distraction that the devil was using to buy time for his soul collectors, had just entered a new territory. Down to the tips of his glowing boots, Link understood that Arrika was conveying something critical now.

"_A lesser degree of karnak is sometimes called swordmastery. It is the concentration of the force of conflict that embodies all living things, all creatures that struggle for life. When great upheavals of destruction like cataclysms and warfare cause it to rise in abundance, it seeks balance by draining into a mortal soul as it is born into the world. When that overflow of force comes to rest in one being, that creature gains the ability to influence that life force in others. You can feel the flow of life energy Link, that is how you find these weak points. You can also manipulate it, draw it forth, and create a weakness where there was none before."_

"_Ah… really_?" Link thought about it for a moment. Of course, it had always seemed terribly convenient that a bunch of overpoweringly huge monstrosities had invariably possessed some fatal flaw for him to exploit, but he'd never imagined it was something _he_ was doing to them.

Even as he absorbed that information, Link strained valiantly just under the surface of his conscious thoughts, unable to budge himself to action, forced to simply stand pat and listen to Arrika. Much like the direct soul-lock they had managed to break, Link was certain that he could rise out of this befuddlement if only the demon would threaten him with more than words. As it was, the demon's charm held fast upon them both, bleeding away precious time, time that represented the lives of Romali's citizens.

"_I thought, from your skills, that you had been born with a touch of the conflict force, of superhuman life energy, and represented a swordmaster, at least." _There was a sense that Arrika, too, struggled on, but she made no more progress against the diversion than Link. _"I was a fool not to realize sooner—you were born with the full measure, the ultimate expression of life energy embodied in a mortal coil. Its no wonder the Triforce of Courage chose you, life energy is the fundamental force that Farore tapped when she energized it."_

"_In the same way, Nayru drew upon the power of the mind, called Psion, and Din upon the power of raw magic, Mephisto, to energize their own thirds. By drawing upon the forces of fundament, energies that govern even the gods, they created tools of raw creation entirely different from the divine swords. It was all that saved us during the war—_DAMN!"

The distraction geass fell apart all at once, and Arrika expressed her self-disgust at being bested in a quick explosion before the great demon again took center stage.

"—**and then defecate on the ashes**!" the demon's mental attack ended at the same time as its prolonged tirade, and the sudden rush of new and overwhelming force that projected invisibly but devastatingly from its shadowed form completely distracted Link from Arrika's frustration. "**And now**," it bellowed, "**since you were so kind as to give me time to digest even more souls from yon hive of humanity, far beyond enough to settle the scales in my favor here, I suppose it is time that I disposed of you**!"

"_Damn_!" Arrika spat the word anew, unable to elaborate on the sentiment as her every faculty was strained by a renewed, direct and overpowering psychic assault. She'd grown rusty after a millennium of dealing almost exclusively with mundane adversaries. She'd forgotten how the Great Evil could twist even one's perception of time and befuddle priorities and strategies all the while. It spoke interminably about nothing, and all along it had been subtly motivating her to allow the delay, even distracting from the lives being ground away just past the city walls. Now they would have to battle on its terms.

One of its hefty arms came around to point at Link, and with Arrika crippled by her efforts to hold off its attack upon his mind, it was only his hyper-developed danger sense that warned him of his impending destruction. At the last possible instant, Link leaped to the side, narrowly avoiding a coiling beam of utter blackness as it sprang instantly from the demon's palm to the point where he'd been standing. It writhed and twitched in the air like a cross between a snake and an arc of electricity, and where its far end touched the earth, everything was scrubbed to a barren and wasted oblivion. The demon immediately began to drag the beam after Link, and would have easily caught and destroyed the hero if the young man's dodge had been anything like he'd planned it to be.

Instead of a quick sideways handspring, however, the iridescent warrior found that his reflexive hop had sent him arcing up through the air like nothing in his memory since the last time he'd been shot from a cannon. At the peak of his flight, he recognized some of what had happened, found himself grateful that he wouldn't be obliterated, and then realized that the ground was rushing up at him and he didn't even have a cuckoo on hand to slow his descent. To his side, the demon was winding up another arm to strike while Link was airborne and unable to dodge, even as its first arm seemed literally bound to the beam it had cast at the ground, at least until it finished exhausting its fury.

Link noted that the demon was vulnerable while it cast its destructive bolts, hardly able to move the arm it used while the spell was in effect. With four arms, it was less of a weakness than he'd have liked, and Link had a bitter moment of amusement about all of Arrika's half-entranced talk about 'karnak.' It was as he thought of that, while plummeting through the air and attempting to formulate a counterstrike, when a terrible realization dawned upon Link.

He sensed nothing from the demon but great danger and evil, not a single weakness. Arrika said that he was manipulating life energy to make weaknesses in his enemies, even if he hadn't realized that was what he was doing. But, she'd also said that this great beast was anti-existence, the opposite of life. What if there was nothing in it he could manipulate, no life-energy he could draw forth and strike at for a fatal blow? The moment the suspicion registered, Link knew it to be true, and knew it was why he couldn't even sense the demon's obvious weak point: Leeta. It also meant that his nearly frantic attempts to find an alternative weak point were probably futile.

Still hurtling through the chill night sky, Link pushed that heartbreaking thought to the side. Caught between the threat of the ground and the demon's next attack, he prioritized as best he could, swinging Arrika's sword through an arc that would send a beam to clip the demon's open palm, hopefully before it could disintegrate him. He imagined the spell just as he had in the past, trusting in Arrika to find a moment to obey.

The beam appeared all right—it sizzled out from the blazing-bright sword like a solid wall of light had spontaneously decided to drape itself across the world; as though an eye-stingingly bright curtain was falling on a stage of midnight black. It licked out in a blinding flash and crashed into the demon's hand with a sound like crystal chimes being tossed down a flight of stairs.

Link was so shocked, he didn't even notice when he hit the ground and bounced effortlessly and painlessly back to his feet, totally uninjured by a twenty-five foot fall. He was left looking rather silly, glancing from Arrika's sword in its brilliant coat of billowing light, to the demon that was now growling and waving some numbness out of its hand. Caught up in his despair over Leeta and Arrika's ramblings, Link had totally failed to anticipate how the Triforce flare would affect the sword's divine magic.

The demon shook off the best shot Arrika had been able to produce, and then lifted all its arms upward at once. A wall of black energy rose up from the earth at its feet, and with another four-armed gesture, it sent the wall sizzling forward at Link. The warrior jumped again, this time prepared to go flying through the sky. He cleared the destructive wall easily, but was yet again exposed to the danger of fixed-trajectory air travel—no ability to maneuver or dodge. Link swung his sword to sting the demon's hands again, trying to cut off any attempt at a combo attack, but the demon capitalized in a different way before he could manage an energy-blast.

Halfway through his sword swing, tiny beams of black force errupted from the demon's many eyes and struck Link dead-on, impacting like a dozen blunt lances born by charging knights. Link was smacked out of the sky and bounced off the ground, coming to his feet slowly. Still, he was able to leap aside along a very low arc, barely clearing the ground, in order to avoid another thunderous blast of ruin from the demon's fists.

Dodging low now, leaping over twenty feet at a time while so close to the ground that grass brushed his armor, Link managed to thread a storm of the creature's attacks until he was on its flanks. The demon's centauroid body was slow to turn, and its ability to rotate at the hips was limited. Link waited until it pinned itself with another series of destructive fist-beams, then made his gambit.

The great, elephantine legs lifted in sequence so that the demon could wheel around, and Link timed a new, gigantic sword-beam to clip the hind leg supporting its weight while the other was halfway through a step. The demon stumbled, its rump came crashing toward the ground, and Link was there when it landed.

The earth rumbled with the impact, but Link kept his feet, looking up the demon's horrifying, tentacle-covered back with an expression of extreme determination. Another sword beam swept up its back, searing away the darkness coating its body as well as the layer of nauseating appendages that writhed in the shadows. The demon bellowed in pain, and Link didn't wait for further invitation, but hopped up onto its back and dashed up the path of charred black flesh he'd made for himself.

Mounting the lower of its two shoulders, he dodged a wild slap by a hair's breadth, clinging on a tuft of black fur to weather the gust of wind from the near miss, then brandished Arrika's sword again. Another huge, thick beam stripped the shadows away from the demon's chest, revealing Leeta's face to the world. Link jumped onto the demon's hand as it came away to slap at him again, then jumped onto its chest, sinking his blade into its meaty torso to make a gripping point only a few feet from Leeta.

The Triforce-infused god-blade seemed to disagree with the creature's unclean flesh, which crackled and burst apart all around the stab wound. On the one hand, Link had to scramble as the sword was suddenly unburied, finding a new grip in the huge wound he'd made. On the other hand, Leeta was half-freed from her fleshy prison, and actually slumped over, her hand dangling enticingly within reach.

"Leeta! Take my hand!" Link called out to her, scrambling up the sludgy, too-smooth edges of the wound he was dug into. Leeta couldn't respond, but let out a gurgling moan. Link had a brief look into her eyes, and he was frozen by what he saw. Her eyes were dead eyes, open but unfocused, fluttering with life, but possessing no intelligence. Link tried not to imagine her as brain dead or insane from her torments, but reached up to grab her dangling hand. He made it within inches.

"**I think not**!" the demon sounded quite amused, even as a massive hand came in behind him faster than he could have ever hoped to dodge. Link found himself gripped in the great paw, and he had a moment to feel fear before he was wracked with agony. The demon tortured him for a moment with a burst of its fell power, but when Link began to struggle, some unconscious reflex blasted the demon back with an intense pulse of golden light from his body. Burnt, the demon flung Link away with a huge overhand toss that spiked him into the earth. Link bounced three times, but found himself able to stand… after a fashion.

"**That stings**!" the demon admitted, favoring its singed fingers. A moment later, its many, many eyes simultaneously narrowed in evil delight. It flexed, and all the burns and wounds Link had caused regenerated before once again becoming enshrouded with darkness. "**I suppose its time I stopped toying with you. My soul-collecting is going very well, you know? Let us see how this attack agrees with you.**"

Link took up a guard stance, sending a cascade of fresh shadows along the countryside with every movement, hoping he was ready for anything that the demon decided to throw at him. The demon, in turn, drew its four arms together at the center of its chest, preparing something unpleasant for its opponent. Link had just enough time to realize that his danger sense was screaming before the new attack landed.

There had been no warning, not so much as the slightest indication of what was going to happen. One moment, the demon completed bringing its arms into alignment. The next, a wall of deadly, invisible force over eighty feet wide and fifty feet tall swept across the battlefield with all the subtlety of a gargantuan bulldozer. It closed the distance between the demon and Link in half a second, and then scraped on to a point eighty feet behind the hero in half a second more.

For a mile in every direction, the windstorm generated by its passage knocked over trees, blew over buildings, and roared in the ears of onlookers. The thunderclap made by air rushing in behind it was so spectacular that it shattered every window in an eight-hundred foot radius and rocked the city walls to their foundations, actually rattling loose a sizable portion of its nearest upper turrets and crenelations and sending them to the ground in a cascade of destruction. In the racetrack-sized rectangle of ruin that described where it had passed, nothing remained. Nothing, that is, except for Link.

The young man looked now about as bewildered as anyone else might have been, glancing at the damage all around him while the ringing in his ears slowly subsided. A quick peek over his shoulder showed a teardrop-shaped stretch of undamaged grassland behind him, while everything else remotely nearby was a meter-deep smoking ditch. The demon, its arms emitting a steam that blended into its cloak of shadows as it stiffly began to move them again, gazed at Link with all its eyes widened in shock.

Link would have loved to spend that moment posing in unmatchable bravado, but he found himself looking from his sword to the rest of his glowing body, unsure of how exactly he hadn't been smeared all across the countryside. The revelation that he was far more out of his league than he'd ever feared was almost as powerfully disorienting as his inexplicable good fortune.

"Arrika… did you do that?" Link said aloud, glancing to the light-ensorcelled sword.

"I did that," Zelda's voice came from his chest-region, clear and slightly harried. "Who's Arrika?"

"Ah…"

Link's danger sense overwhelmed him again before he could even consider how to begin phrasing a response to that question, much less adjust to Zelda's sudden ability to intervene directly in his battles. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd dodged to the side again, only to crash headfirst into an invisible wall an instant later. Knocked senseless for a moment, he was rocked again as the air around him tolled like a bell—a bell with him as the knocker inside of it.

"Gah! Wha?" Link managed, rattling around the inside of an invisible sphere as he scrambled for balance. The world tolled again, the screaming of his survival instinct deafening the warrior, but he finally was able to collect his wits despite even these imposing distractions. His glow flared and wavered as he faced that assault a third time, and now he was able to tune it out completely and focus on what was actually going on.

The tolling was the echoing reverberation caused by the demon's obliterating whip-crack beams of black destruction rebounding off the magical shell that had come to encase Link with impenetrable defenses. It became visible briefly every time another blow scraped dramatically along its outer contours, and Link could see that it was seven feet in diameter and formed of interlinking polygons. He had a bemused moment of nostalgia as he recognized it as the same spell that had encased Hyrule Castle during the height of Zant's occupation, except smaller and harder to see.

"Zelda? This is—" Link began, but found his voice overruled when the princess spoke again.

"It's a light magic version of the Twilli barrier spell," her voice came to him somewhat breathless, as though she were jogging while she spoke. "It is supposed to be close to impenetrable, but—"

The whole world throbbed once more, and now the ground buckled beneath Link's boots, fissures splitting out in all directions. One blow after another rained down, the crushing force of supernatural obliteration weighing upon his shell like the continual spouting of a waterfall as the demon began to lash with all four arms in unbroken sequence. The shield flared an angry golden-bronze as it repelled that relentless assault, and now it was clear that stress lines were starting to worm through its geometric matrix.

"Bad!" Link shouted, searching frantically and in utter futility for some route of escape, anything at all to silence the screaming wail of impending doom echoing in his skull. "VERY BAD! Zelda? This is BAD Zelda!"

"I'm working on it—" she was cut off by a horrifying sound akin to a great glacier fracturing into icebergs. There was the merest breath of bleak anticipation, the stress lines suddenly multiplied a thousand-fold, and then the shield gave way.

**Moments Ago: The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Before Zelda, gracing the center of her huge desk, was the magical hologram generated by the whispering stone she had spent so much time modifying, improving, and expanding. Through it, she had seen the great fiend that wakened her Triforce fragment so violently. She recognized it instantly with a chill in the pit of her stomach, despite the fact that such beings were only barely hinted at in the fragmented records that remained from the bygone eras. She even recognized the magic it was using, a perverse art unlike Twilli magic or Gerudo-style black magic only in that it lacked any element of light magic at all—something that beings of flesh and blood could never hope to control.

The certainty that Link would be unable to win on his own was accompanied by an idea for how to help, and Zelda had invented a new kind of magic, or at least one she'd never heard of before, almost as soon as she'd thought of it. She was working out specifics when she noticed the way the demon was arranging its many arms, at which point everything else was erased by undiluted urgency. Recognition of the threat, a response, and the decision to act were all virtually instantaneous.

Zelda's mind and magic were hyper-charged by the glow that had spread from her hand to encompass her entire body, and even still, she nearly broke herself with her next effort. The mental logistics of modifying Zant's barrier spell, which she had only heard being cast, never actually studied, and then further encompassing it within the greater spell pattern architecture of her new distance-projection magic, was impossible to describe, even through analogy. Suffice to say that, when she had it ready in time, when it traveled through space to find Link, anchoring perfectly to his whispering stone, and then activated a whole thousandth of a second before the demon could annihilate the battlefield, Zelda found herself utterly spent.

Unfortunate, then, that the barrier required more power than she had given it, and doubly unfortunate that it took what it needed without asking.

"AAAHHG!" Zelda bucked in sharp agony as the barrier was struck, knives of malignant sensation stabbing into her brain so hard that she felt it down to her teeth. As a credit to their efficiency, Zelda's guards slammed past the courtesy locks almost before her shout of pain had faded from the air. As a credit to their essential mortality, they took one look at their monarch glowing like a nighttime sun from every pore and strand of hair, a great image of unspeakable horrors floating ghostly in the air before her, and stumbled from the room, dumbfounded.

"Arrika… did you do that?" Link's voice came from the whispering stone, and Zelda managed to gather herself enough to recognize something deeply wrong with that question. She activated the voice connection from her end only when she had her breathing under control and could once again see past the red haze of agony shearing her skull.

"I did that," she said, "Who's Arrika?" She'd asked out of reflex, or perhaps something deeper, but she couldn't really tell if he responded or not.

Almost as soon as she'd finished, she closed her end of the voice connection and focused her every faculty anew. It took far more concentration than she liked to admit to keep the barrier functioning, especially holding all of the magical construct patterns in her mind, there being no time at all to even think about drawing any of them out. Restructuring it at the same time so that it would not pummel her with feedback was a new extreme of effort, but at least it paid off when the barrier was clubbed with unspeakable force moments later.

The drain on her body that came with powering that spell was like nothing Zelda had ever experienced. She kept in shape—through riding and fencing and long walks—but nothing could have prepared her for the sudden shock of fatigue that sapped into her bones as the spell tapped her to sustain itself. She actually slumped back, limp and unmoving in her chair as she was crippled by its requirements, straining everything she had to keep her mind focused on the spell as her body rode out the draining.

Digging deep, Zelda restructured the spell, improving its efficiency by leaps and bounds until she could keep up against the assault and sit up in her chair at the same time. Seconds later, she was even able to free up enough of her mind to notice that Link was talking again, and she mumbled a breathless explanation as she continued to work frantically against the clock.

All of a sudden, however, Zelda hit her limit. The spell had been designed by Zant, who was possessed by Gannon, who was owner of the Triforce of Power, if not its true vessel. The spell's structure was power-hungry specifically because its designers had possessed power to burn and little in the way of imagination in how to apply it. Zelda had improved it a good twenty or thirty times over from the original version, but there was nothing else she could do to it except feed it more power. She didn't have any more power, but apparently the demon did, because the assault intensified and the barrier started to fail. She couldn't even give Link an escape route as she held the archfiend off. The spell's strength relied on its structure—if she removed any fraction of it to allow Link's escape, the rest would disintegrate like candyfloss.

Zelda was, for the first time since her mind had begun to expand, strained beyond her means. Even with her every faculty working to the limit of her capacity, all three cycles engaged in a unified effort, entwining them together for the first time in months, it still wasn't enough. Now it seemed as though she had plucked Link from one death only to condemn him to another. Her certainty of her failure was only softened by the fact that she couldn't spare enough attention to dwell on it, even as she felt the spell start to come apart at the seams.

"Your Majesty?" voices came from behind her, but Zelda had no attention to spare. She thought she recognized Ashei's voice, but it was the hand of an old man that slapped down onto her shoulder a moment later. Suddenly, Zelda was filled with energy again, although it did nothing to stop the crumbling spell, it gave her a chance to draw her attention back to the immediacy of her hotel room. Auru stood beside her desk with his hands on her shoulder, and she glanced up to see him smiling at her with a look that bore ages even beyond those he had acquired in his long life. Upon his chest was a symbol that glowed so brightly, it showed through his ceremonial robes. It was the symbol of light, three triangles arranged in a circle, each pointing inward, with tiny circles in the spaces between them.

"Add my powers to yours," he said, as a golden light flowed from his hands to merge with the brilliance of her body, "And use it to save our young compatriot."

Zelda simply nodded, numb with the seemingly slow-motion implosion of the spell that consumed her mind. Somewhere deeper than the conscious part of her mind, beneath that super-charged zone where she spent all of her time these days, she said a simple prayer for salvation. It was the last thing she did before power surged through her anew, and she jolted with the force of it.

It was then that Auru, Ashei, and a handful of guards and servants with more loyalty or bravado than sense were witness to their monarch, second in their hearts only to the goddesses themselves, dissolve into a sphere of pure light and jolt out of the nearby window, arc around a building, up into the sky, and over the horizon in a beam of blue-tinged gold. As quickly as it began, it was gone, and when the haze cleared, something remained in Zelda's chair, but it was not the princess.

**Moments Ago, The Eastern Steppes**

Aziza stared at her glowing hand in consternation, trying in vain to analyze the magic that was causing her whole body to shine like a lighthouse beacon. Earlier, a pulse of chilling terror had spilled out across the background magic that permeated the world, connecting all things, and the jolt of it had half-woken her from an already fitful slumber. For a time, she'd lingered in a half-dreaming state, visions of terrible, beast-like horrors playing through her mind and sending her into a fit of tossing and turning. At length, the ache from her hand became too much, and she came fully awake, but without opening her eyes.

She'd slipped from the tent she shared with Jamal and Nebure, careful not to wake them, and was out in the chill night air of the steppes when she noticed that the ache accompanied a shining light blazing from her hand. Within moments, the undiluted golden light emanating from every inch of her flesh was barely contained by the silken blanket she'd brought to cover her sheer nightgown. Now she was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, staving off a tide of panic only with great difficulty.

"Gah, is it sunrise already?" Jamal's voice came drowsy and annoyed from within the tent, where Aziza had forgotten to close the flap. Nebure, never a morning person, simply grunted and pulled her blankets over her head. Aziza couldn't be bothered with either of them—she was too busy beginning an intense and inexplicable panic attack.

As she stood there in the empty steppes, her whole world safe and secure within a defense spell of her own confident creation, the sorceress was unable to imagine why her heart was starting to pump faster in her chest. A cold sweat broke out across her brow, chilling in the steppe breeze, but her body was hot with her sizzling nerves. With no real explanation why, she was starting to go through her combat spells in her subconscious mind, preparing for a battle of earth-shattering proportions. All the while, her left hand throbbed, a golden triangle standing out in stark relief against her bronzed skin.

"Aziza?" Jamal had crawled to the tent flap, eyes still clouded with sleep, to find his love standing tense and primed for danger beside the ashes of their campfire. His nightgown was half-open, revealing an expanse of gentle curves and hard muscle in confused opposition down his body. The sorceress in question had a moment to turn and admire that beautiful view before her powers suddenly rose to peak entirely independent of any intention of her own.

"EEEKKK!" she peeped out an undignified shriek of surprise as power thudded through her body, and then the sound cut off suddenly as she dissolved before Jamal's eyes. In the briefest instant, she transformed into red-tinged light, wound up into a solid sphere, and then beamed up into the night sky. Jamal's astonished gaze followed it up, then jerked to the side as the beam made a sharp right-angle turn and dashed across the horizon in a heartbeat, disappearing into the distance.

A moment later, all was dark. Of the beautiful young sorceress, there was no sign, but a statue so black it seemed to be carved of obsidian was standing where she had been. Its likeness to the young woman was quite perfect, and it was clad in her nightgown and blanket, but it was impossible to mistake the fact that Aziza was no longer there. Jamal stared, jaw hanging wide, and then turned slowly to the west.

**Outside Romali's Eastern Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

"This is BAD Zelda!" Arrika heard Link shout, even as his voice was overpowered by the horrifying sound of the spell fracturing. The warrior braced himself to be obliterated, bringing Arrika's sword up to a guard position, but the oppressive weight of the demon's mental assault paralyzed her powers. If she had possessed even the slightest shred of spare attention, she might have despaired to lose everything just as she had discovered her ticket to redemption. Alas, there was only the grinding of the demon upon the mental shields she struggled with all her might to maintain.

With a sound like an ice cube being smashed in the grip of iron pliers, the shield imploded with sudden and utterly lethal force. Arrika's sword took the blast of ruination energy with barely a fluttering of sensation to the embattled spirit, but she knew it was only a matter of seconds before her spirit's mated vessel fell from Link's hands, which surely would be rendered unto dust by the same blow. In this, there was nothing she could do to shield his frail mortal coil, and she steeled herself anew for the pain of their spirit-bond rending asunder.

The pain never came. Instead, there was a reverberation of energy though every layer of existence Arrika was capable of sensing. Nostalgia overpowered her, even as the demon's assault suddenly abated, for this disturbance was something she hadn't felt since time immemorial. Such an intense displacement was utterly rare, but her memory had been refreshed when the demon had entered the realm of material existence, because it had caused a dark parody of the same planet-wide gust of power. This, however, this was something she had not truly felt since the end of the Genesis Wars, since the fall of the gods' chosen sentinels. In short, it was the harmonic resonance of reality to the inception of a god-weapon into its full combat form.

The distorting wave of power washed over her, and suddenly Arrika was free to tune her senses back to the world. Link was not dead, but he was not holding her sword either, and all the power she had received from him was gone. Her blade was sticking point-down into the earth at the feet of a black statue wearing Link's new armor and laden weapons harnesses. If she could have been bothered to think of it, she would have recognized the statue as a cipher, placeholder for a very special variety of out-of-body-experience. Unfortunately, her attention was completely absorbed by the nighttime-sun that now glowed radiantly at the intersection point of three beams. One arrow-straight ray arced up from Link's cipher, but the other two zipped in from far over the horizon, seeming to bend only as they followed the curvature of the planet.

The new star that had been born so close to the planet was shot through with prismatic twists of red, blue, and green, and the source of those colors seemed to be three tiny wisps of radiant energy that orbited the star in loose, random paths. Even as Arrika stood dumbfounded, utterly astonished by this visitation from an era lost in time, the three colored wisps darted toward the center of the star and met in a silent explosion of astonishing intensity. Nothing mortal could have seen the heart of the light that bloomed from that meeting point, but any interested gods or demons would have seen traceries of magic circles etched upon the sky, barely containing a bubble of raw chaos, the stuff of making.

All at once, the spectacle collapsed in on itself, sending out a rush of displaced air to blow aside the clouds of debris and smoke that still choked the air in the aftermath of the demon's assault on Zelda's shield. In the crystal-clear sky that gust revealed, a man-sized figure floated proud and erect in mid-air. If a person's form, neither male nor female, could be woven out of the beams of light that sometimes filter into a shadowed room, that would be the only way to achieve something similar to the figure in the sky. Featureless, the energy-entity's blank face was dominated by a glowing pyramid of three triangles that rotated slowly a few inches in front of its smooth visage. In its left hand it held a five-foot scepter of red light, in its right, a longsword of green light, and on its head sat a crown of royal blue.

"The Triforce Singularity…" Arrika breathed out a gasp of breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Much of her mind was caught up in memories of a time so long ago, the continents had been arranged differently. The rest was too stunned to act. It was not a problem either of the other great actors in the night's ongoing drama suffered from.

The demon made a sound like the baying of every beast ever to stalk the night giving voice to its rage in the same breath, the unholy roar blasting through the darkness as no other sound possibly could have. At the same time, black lightning chased down from each of its bestial hands, along its four arms, and met in its chest before finally transmitting to its head. A half-second later, twisting beams of darkness struck instantaneously from its innumerable eyes and out at the being of light.

The blast was intercepted by a blue shield that appeared from nothing to encase the Triforce Singularity in a shell shaped like a many-faceted rupee gemstone, reflecting it at an oblique angle and returning it to the earth in the same split-instant that it had taken to travel to its intended target. The demon's attack wound up clipping the south-eastern-most turret of Romali's fortifications, erasing it, the walls around it, and parts of two city blocks in the blink of an eye. One moment it was all there, the next there was nothing but a glass-smooth crater and dozens of bisected buildings.

It wasn't until a few seconds later, as buildings that were unbalanced by the sudden disappearance of half their mass started to tip over in thundering collapses, that Arrika finally snapped from her reverie. She glanced over her shoulder at the destroyed section of town, then back to the titans facing off before her, unsure of what she should be doing.

Even with all of the power Link had been able to supply her, she had still been so diminished that she hadn't even the strength to resist the demon's more subtle soul lock or cause anything like permanent damage to its hellish flesh. It was the ultimate indication of just how far she had fallen over the eons.

At her zenith, she and her sisters had each individually been a match for the entirety of the Triforce combined, even as their powers were very different, and difficult to compare. Now she was little more than a ghost, a phantasmal shadow of her former self, clinging to existence on the margins of reality, able to manifest at all only by symbiosis of her lingering strength with that of mortals.

It was as she paused there, at a loss for what to do and feeling rather sorry for herself, that the battle began in earnest.

**A Place That is Not a Place**

"_Where_?" Link said, only to realize that it had not come out as a word, but as a thought. His experience with Arrika had taught him to recognize the difference instantly, but he doubtless would have noted the distinction quickly enough as he came to comprehend his new surroundings.

Link was standing in a stark white room distinguishable mostly for its lack of any furnishing save for a plain pedestal such as one might stand a decorative vase upon. He was not alone, but shared the room with two indistinct figures, definable by his muddled senses only by the fact that one seemed entirely blue, and the other entirely red. It was as he started to make sense of his inability to truly grasp what he was seeing that the other 'thought' voices began to make themselves 'heard.'

"_What in the world_?" Came from the blue figure, and Link recognized Zelda instantly. The moment he made the connection, the indistinct blue figure transformed into the princess… sort of. Link found himself staring at Zelda, naked but blurred and indistinct beneath the neck, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with two identical copies of herself so that the three of them formed a circle, each facing outward.

"_Gah… Huh_?" a sound of stark confusion came from the red figure, but this prompted no instant transformation to Link's eyes. He didn't recognize the voice in the slightest, but he noted that it sounded female, and that made the figure into a featureless female silhouette. The silhouette was not alone either, but instead of two twin copies, there was a single, gargantuan clone towering behind it. There were no distinguishing features to either of them, but Link couldn't help but have a certain feeling of familiarity as he turned from the stranger and back to Zelda.

"_Your Majesty, have you any idea what's going on here_?" Link asked, figuring she was his best immediate chance of getting a grip on the situation.

"_Link? OH_!" Zelda gasped, and all three of her bluish avatars moved simultaneously to a stance of shock as she saw him. "_The wolf_..."

"_Mmm_?" Link turned to look at himself, and found that he was constituted entirely of green haze below his shoulders. By his side was a green wolf, and he saw himself in it immediately. The only difference between it, and the image he'd seen in mirror surfaces not long ago was the fact that it was closer to the size of a horse as it sat beside him in a rather regal pose.

"_This just gets stranger by the minute_," Link muttered, hearing a slow mantra of unintelligible rambling start to emanate from the mysterious red figure.

_"If I had to guess, I'd say were manifesting in some kind of spiritual representation_," Zelda informed him, once she'd recovered from her initial shock. "_The only possible explanation that comes to mind is_…" She held up her left hand, doubtless to indicate her Triforce stigmata. What she displayed instead was a perfect, crisp-edged triangular void in the blue mist of her hand. "_Ahh… this can't be good_."

"_You're the one who knows about magic_," Link tried not to sound accusatory as he found his own hand void where the Triforce symbol used to glow. "_Explain to me what's happened to us_."

"_I only wish I knew_," Zelda began to stalk forward, as though preparing to pace, and sparks and swirls of nearly-perceptible energy started to scribble around above each of her three bodies' heads in distinctly different patterns. "_Let me think for a moment_," she said, and then turned to pace in the other direction, presenting Link with a different, identical face as she pivoted about.

"_I hate to interrupt, strangers_," spoke the mystery woman, finally coming free from her panic, at least slightly, "_But perhaps we should concern ourselves with _that!"

She pointed upward to the ceiling, and Link and Zelda both looked up, mirrored by their spiritual companions, to see that there was no ceiling at all. Instead, there was an image of the great demon that Link had been battling of late, and it seemed to be striking forth with a hail of black lighting and knotted black coils of destructive force. As yet, all this was being repelled by some kind of blue crystal shell between them and the demon, but all around the image were streamers of words and knots of complex symbols that indicated to them all that it would not last, even though not one of them recognized the language.

"_The pedestal_!" Zelda said, reacting to an instinct, a visceral, absolute knowledge that settled upon them all at the same moment. She reached out to grasp it immediately, and Link's wolf suddenly growled, even as he tried to shout a warning to her, a message from his danger sense. Too late, she gripped the pedestal, and all of them were undone.

"_**Unite**_!" Zelda said, speaking with three voices at once, all overlain. The single word was a command with absolute force to Link and the stranger, who each found themselves unable to do anything but step forward and touch the pedestal along with the princess. As soon as they lay hands on it, any concerns they might have had were erased.

"_**We must make a plan**_," Zelda said, and all three of her voices immediately started to think out loud in a cacophonous mash of words.

"_**We will destroy all threats**_!" Link said, in a voice that was more bestial growl than speech.

"_**Our power shall be a thing of terrifying beauty**_," the third figure stated, each word booming like a giant's whisper, "_**And that demon's power shall be ours**_!"

**Outside Romali's Eastern Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

The end of the Triforce Singularity's defensive immobility was announced when it suddenly split in three directions, three human figures joined by faint threads of light darting out to avoid the latest burst of grinding attack magic from the demon's hands and eyes. With magnificent coordination, a figure bearing a green sword came to the ground and began to circle around the demon on its left side like a blur, even as a figure wearing a blue crown produced a bow from the substance of its body and flew to a position at its fore and a figure with a red scepter dashed in from behind to take up a spot underneath it.

The demon followed all three separately, finally choosing to strike at the sword-bearer, seeking to wash it away with a full-fledged assault from all of its arms and eyes. Before it could, the red figure blasted upward with an eruption of silver, gold, and violet magic that was not unlike a boiling of molten lava made of insubstantial light. The wash of light seared the demon's flesh and peeled back the veil of shadow guarding its body just in time for six continuous lines of eye-stinging gold to leap from the blue figure's bow. One bolt of light pierced each of its wrists and the ankles above its front two centauroid legs. Pinned, the demon bellowed in frustration as the swordsman vanished in a breath of wind, reappearing at the monster's chest with sword raised to strike.

"_Leeta_!" Arrika shrieked, as she watched helplessly from the sidelines. The green swordsman figure was poised to stab into the demon's heart-flesh, a strike that would surely obliterate the demon's mortal anchor in this dimension. At the last possible instant, the demon flared with a new blush of power, sweeping away the three man-sized figures crowding around it like so many vermin. Again draped in shadows, it renewed its assault, but with little success. Its bolts of black destruction quickly scoured the landscape, deflections from the blue crystal shields guarding the light figures raining into the city they were supposed to be defending.

Arrika found herself oddly relieved that the stalemate continued, even as she was mystified by Link's total lack of concern for the zora princess and the innocent people still struggling for life in Romali's streets. What could have gotten into him, that he would battle so recklessly and strike at his young friend without the slightest hesitation? The singularity entity was supposed to be under joint control of the three Triforce bearers—at least from what little she knew of their powers. They had always been aloof, separate, and strangely different… just like their patron goddesses. Arrika realized quite suddenly that she knew much less about them that she might once have boasted.

"_Archangel_," a voice spoke behind Arrika, and she turned in surprise to find the blue-crowned figure floating there. Threads of faint golden light spun out of its mass and over her shoulders to where the battle still raged, connecting it to its other parts. Arrika couldn't help but be amazed that a demon stood in need of eradication, but here was one third of the trinity, lavishing its strained attentions on the disgraced god-warrior that had been so recently left behind.

"_I hardly deserve that grandiose title_," Arrika scoffed, shocking herself with just how bitter the words came out. It was not until that moment that she realized just how jealous she was that the disciples of the Hylian Trinity somehow retained their divine grace. For all that they showed tonight, they could have stepped through time itself, emerging unscathed and undiminished from the Genesis Age.

"_You are to comply with our stratagem to banish the anti-god_," the being of light commanded, as though Arrika had never spoken. Perhaps it was there that the Sword Maiden began to realize that something was seriously amiss, but she was so blinded by petulant frustration that she didn't act on the suspicion.

"_Certainly_," Arrika muttered, "_Perhaps if I can re-contract with a new mortal and spend a few decades in close contact, I might gain access to enough of my own power to scuff up the demon's carapace a little. Let me get back to you on that_."  
"_Power will be provided_," the entity told her, "_you will aid in breaking the stalemate. The demon's supply of souls must be constrained. This is your task_."

"_Souls_?" The moment she asked, she felt a fool. There were untold multitudes of minion demons raping the city, even as she stood there feeling sorry for herself. The battle could drag on all night if the demon kept feeding on the mass murder taking place in Romali the whole time. Dawn would be a victory for their side at this point, but what kind of victory would it be? And worse still, what kind of subtle evils might the demon work to corrupt the whole of living existence in the meantime, even if it could not blot out the sun while distracted by the Triforce Singularity? "_Of course. But I must ask, what of the soul binding the demon here, and why aren't you acting to protect the city more yourselves_?"

"_No questions—it is time to act_." The curt dismissal was appalling to Arrika in the extreme, and it broke something inside of her, something that had been holding together nicely since she realized what a rare find Link was as her mortal contractor. Before the blue-crowned figure could dematerialize, Arrika the Archangel made her return.

"_No questions_?" Arrika snapped, regaining the entity's attention through sheer force of will. "_I am Arrika lo dim Rospalcino sert Belturgolo, High Lady and chosen apostle of Mother and Father of the West. I am your equal in status, if no longer in power, and by the compact that binds us all in common purpose against the enemies of existence, I demand to be treated with the respect I am due_!"

There was a moment of consideration, and then the Triforce symbol floating before the figure's blank face blinked. It relented.

"_You have invoked the Compact of Creation, and that I am unable to deny. Speak your questions, but be mindful that time is of the essence. The anti-god must be banished or broken, nothing else matters_."

"_And that's exactly my question_!" Arrika, high on the success of having pulled rank despite the circumstances, spoke with renewed passion. "_It is the people we must protect, they are the children of my gods, if not of yours. I will be the first to admit they are expendable to a certain extent, but_—"

"_Irrelevant_," the entity cut her off, "_they will all die if the anti-god is allowed to persist. If our actions save even one life, they will be benefactors of divine intervention, and if not, they will be no worse off than they might otherwise have found themselves. Regardless, they are unimportant. If there was power to spare, we would destroy them ourselves to deny their souls to the anti-god_."

"_Wha…_" Arrika found herself at a loss for words, but only for a moment. "_Is that really you, Princess Zelda? I'd gathered from the way Link speaks of you that there was something resembling a heart beating in your chest, not a chuck of glacial ice_."

The entity seemed to hesitate at the mention of Link and Zelda. It was clear to Arrika that it wanted to go back to battle, but was still bound by the compact she had invoked. The question stood, and it was obligated to answer to the best of its ability.

"_You speak of the vessel. It does not add input to our planning processes at this time. Neither do your words reach the portion of our consciousness defined by the vessel's personality. Address it no further_."

"_Why_?"

"_The vessels were not prepared for this extreme level of manifestation. There has not been time to alter them sufficiently. Too much of their life, mind, and magical energy is still constrained by the mortality of their current forms. In time that will change, but for now, we are forced to act without them_." The entity was truly getting impatient now, and it showed in what body language could still be communicated by a shell of woven light.

"_Their minds are, as yet, under-adapted to our power, and are unable to assert themselves. We exist within them as independent sources of will, and now act in surrogate during this moment of crisis. Now if you are satisfied, the anti-god will wait no longer_."

"_What if I don't want to be any part of this plan of yours_?" Arrika heard herself shriek, at once terrified by what she'd heard, and relieved that Link had not taken some bizarre leave of his senses. For now, they were simply puppets of the Triforce, a construction of pure energy that lacked anything like an inherent moral compass. Efficiency dictated all of their actions now, along with a certain amount of ferocity and boundless confidence.

"_You have invoked the compact_," the spirit said, even as it faded in a swirl of green wind, "_do not force us to do the same_."

Arrika had one last moment of bitterness, and it was sour as ashes in her mouth to recognize that her own trump move had just been turned back on her. Seconds later, another singularity phantom broke from the battle to arrive at her side. This one bore a great staff of red light, and Arrika realized they were making good on their part of the strategy. There was just time for her to recall that she had no idea whom the Triforce of Power's vessel might be before it brandished its scepter with a regal flair.

"_A loan, Archangel_," spoke the red aspect, in a mental tone identical to the blue aspect's imperious droning. "_Already you have unlocked some of your dormant potential using our power. We do not begrudge our ally sentinels such aid, but be wary of impinging on the vessel you are bound to… unduly_."

The warning had been phrased rather cryptically, but Arrika understood. The part of the Triforce that was a quasi-conscious divine artifact was telling her that the golden energy she'd acquired from Link had been noticed. It also said that they were willing to help her, and her sisters too, so long as she didn't break their precious mortal agent in the process. It was good to know.

Finally, the spirit touched the end of its scepter to the hilt of Arrika's sword where it stood point-first in the blasted earth near Link's cipher. There was no spectacular lightshow, no explosion, and certainly no dramatically timed peal of orchestrated music to accentuate the transfer of power in this case. The entire operation was completed by a tiny wisp of golden light trickling down around the blade in a spiraling motion, leaving it gently tinged in a warm bronze haze. The lack of drama, in fact, belied the huge transfusion of power that had just taken place. Arrika realized this immediately, even as she found herself giggling uncontrollably, giddy from the unfamiliar rush of unimaginable potency.

With a sudden, eager motion, Arrika beckoned to the nearby blade with a flick of her wrist. It vanished, slid through space, and reappeared in her hand just in time for her to raise it up in front of her face in a duelist's salute. A cloud of vibrant white smoke blasted forth from the enormous gemstones on its hilt like a geyser venting steam, wrapping Arrika's immaterial spirit form around and around, as though the living tendrils of a snowy-white beast sought to strangle every inch of her. The smoke constricted, rushing into the space outlined by her phantom like milk filling a person-shaped jar, leaving a rough human outline. The smoke began to swirl one last time, a whirlwind crawling through the contained smoke from top to bottom. Where the smoke finished swirling, the indistinct figure was replaced by a real, solid female form.

What was revealed was not a child of indeterminate teenage years, but a being that had once been called Archangel, divine guardian of all existence and a demigod in her own right. If the juvenile phantom that had so beguiled Link could be aged ten years and engage the services of the finest salon in Las Aguas or Monseille, just maybe the result would have been the gorgeous woman now wielding _Bijou Blanc_. The woman's hip-length blond hair was bundled into a serious braided ponytail with help from a silver hairpin shaped like a butterfly, and the color of it stood out against the alabaster-white of her skin like it had been spun from gold and lit from within by a subtle flame.

She wore a military-cut jerkin and breeches of milky white cloth, and along with a light breastplate of intricately engraved silver, she wore a set of silver armor all down the right side of her body. With a shoulder brace, elbow brace, and gauntlet on her right arm, and a chap-plate, shin-plate, and greaves on her right leg, she would present a solid metal wall to any enemy she faced in fencing guard. To balance the visual, the left side of her uniform was embroidered with brocade that was almost as radiantly golden as her hair.

"Consider those minions banished," Arrika promised, using a voice that any mortal might hear for the first time in an age that knows no true accounting. She placed a hand to her throat, perhaps having surprised even herself, and then continued to run her fingers along her braid and across her armor, seemingly astonished to be solid. _Pleasantly_ astonished. Still, she cast an askance glance over her shoulder, almost lashing her long braid, and quirked her eyebrow at what she _didn't_ see. "Ah… my pinion… it… _isn't_…"

"_In this form, we cannot access all our power, and so there are limits to what we can bequeath_," the spirit explained, "_and the demon inhibits us enormously there as well_." That said, the spirit twisted its scepter at a new angle. "_Allow us to hasten you on your mission. You will find quarry where the city meets the lake, and at the crossroads. Anon, Archangel, while we are still able to contain the demon's attention_."

Before she could get a word in edgewise, Arrika vanished in a swirl of green wind. The spirit lingered for only an instant before turning to join the protracted melee with the great demon. The singularity spirits clashed with the beast, keeping its attention occupied, preventing it from detecting the threat to its supply line, even as it believed it was preventing them from attacking its minions at the same time. The battle wore on, locked in stalemate, and Romali paid the price with every passing minute.

**Streets of Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

At the crossroads of Romali's two most important streets, a great mob of crazed, torch-wielding maniacs held sway, at least until about ten minutes previous. At that time, the aura of demonic fear that blanketed the city had suddenly abated. The difference between a mob crazed by supernatural terror and a mob crazed on general principals is minute in many cases, but pronounced in others. For example, it had taken only moments for people to take to activities like looting and vandalism, rather than simply lighting fire to everything in sight in a concentrated attempt to drive off the hell-bats killing everyone they could reach. On the other hand, practically the first thing to be looted was the armory of the Crossroads Garrison House, and now crossbow bolts coated in burning pitch lit the night sky as militia men tried to drive off the flocks of nightmare death which hunted the city skies.

Make no mistake, however, because there was nothing like true order in the resistance. Perhaps the best example of this fact was when a small mob got it into their heads to raid the siege weapon factory a few streets down, and then pushed three light catapults to the center of the crossroads. Soon, great hunks of burning buildings and gutter muck were flying up at the demons, and then falling right back down onto the buildings of the city. Ill-conceived as an attack strategy, but surprisingly effective, the great burning stones killed with their light as well as their impact, sweeping the night sky above the crossroads clear of the bat creatures. They also shed light on something unharmed by the exposure, and this was how the people came to know the massive, misshapen owl that was the source of all the smaller beasts.

Crowds screamed and scattered as it swept down to land upon and utterly crush one of the catapults. The female faces it possessed instead of eyes began to shriek in unison, and the sound went forth like a wind of death, blasting ears and eyes into bleeding ruin all along the massed survivors. Flaming crossbow bolts came from all directions to pepper its back and stick in the strange mouths that decorated it in bizarre places, and it immediately started to flap back into the air, trying to gain altitude, doubtless intending to swoop down and obliterate another catapult. Its flapping wings extinguished many torches, and new clouds of bats swept out of its plumage to renew their reign of terror, distracting much of the human counter-attack.

For a moment, the human resistance wavered on the edge of complete collapse, a rout that would doubtless have led to hundreds or even thousands more deaths in a matter of minutes. And then, a figure stepped out of the crowd and sprang up onto a catapult that had been cranked back but not loaded. The man raved madly in _Lingua_, waving a chair leg with a burnt-down tip and a cheap shortsword in alternating gyrations. Although he bled profusely from a chest would and one hand, the fiery determination in his eyes could not be denied. Five great wing-beats into the air, and the devil-owl was in perfect position. The madman cut the crank-cord, ruining the catapult's firing mechanism, and was launched into the air like a living ballista bolt.

Against all odds, the man struck the owl directly in its feathery breast, knocking it violently off balance and sending it into a spiraling crash-dive. Crushed together, they smashed through an already burning building which housed a lamp fuel factory, touching off a kerosene tank that went up in a sudden, apocalyptic fireball. The building blew itself apart, and the new, towering blaze it created eradicated a great mass of the newest flying demons, as well as two or three ranks of the massed crowd that couldn't get clear before the explosion. The wails of the dying mixed with the roar of a new, enormous fire as shell-shocked onlookers started to close in on the inferno crater that was all that remained of the great demon.

Just when it seemed everything had calmed, the fire was snuffed as easily as a cap settling over a candlestick, and a second explosion burst forth, this time entirely constructed of a new plume of bat demons. They shot upward, the horribly burnt and half-melted owl creature wrenched itself forth from the wreckage, and then the bat things shot back down into the crowds. The madman's crazed gambit had failed, and the dying promised to be a truly epic process.

It was this scene that greeted a gust of green wind, and the Sword Maiden who arrived on its gentle, quiet whisper. Arrika took in all the relevant details in a single glance, and her sword began to move so quickly that it was difficult to catch more than a flicker of reflected light with the naked eye. Tiny beams, visible now, as earlier, with her emergence to a new plateau of power, struck out into the crowd, even as larger ones began to sweep the air. Spirals, streamers, darts, arrows, bubbles, and sometimes even walls of silver-gold power emitted from the blurring space in front of the Archangel as she stalked toward the ruined owl demon, and everywhere they touched, bat demons became so much smoke. Although the power sent out was always proportional to the number of demons the strike would destroy, it never had to account for the civilians she was trying to save, as the beams passed through them harmlessly, without so much as an incidental sensation.

The crowd, so suddenly delivered from a massacre, stared at the gorgeous figure with a reverence few would have considered possible in a modern, jaded, urbanized society like that of Romali, trade capital of the western world. The truth was, human beings are innately capable of recognizing salvation when they are brought to tears by the beauty of it. They parted around her, silent, watching and letting the vision of it be etched into their memories as Arrika approached the wounded, but still dangerous minion demon.

The broken creature did not lie passively and wait for destruction, but turned its grotesque eyes on Arrika and vented a scream that might have liquefied a mortal brain inside its skull. Having no stock with the Triforce Singularity and its bizarre, heartless automatic-pilot mode, Arrika struck the ground at her feet with her blade's tip, setting the thin blade to an ear-piercing resonance. The noise repelled the demon's murderous shriek, deflecting it upward harmlessly into the sky rather than allowing it to crash into the massed civilians. Before her sword finished humming, Arrika had stabbed twice in quick succession, sending two beams like solid white harpoons to jab through the demon's two eyes. It let out a horrifying, but harmless sound of agony from its many toothsome maws, and then Arrika was upon it.

Taking a fencer's stance, Arrika quickly jabbed forward and soaked the first five inches of her sword in the demon's blood. The teeth all over it gnashed forward, and Arrika was actually forced to dodge left and right as the mouths distorted off the body and extended on misshapen tentacles to strike. Before it could sink its fangs into her, she hefted the two hundred pounds of seared demon meat on the tip of her sword and expertly flung it up into the air. It flapped pathetically with the stub of one wing it still possessed, but its fate was sealed.

Arrika's sword flashed too fast to see, and a bundle of white blade beams shaped like a blooming rose intercepted the demon in mid-air, cleaving it to bloody bits. Even still, the bits reached out with tendrils to try and draw back together as they arced through the sky, and Arrika proceeded immediately to the _coup de grace_. In a fraction of the time it had taken her as a phantom, Arrika drew the banishing seal upon the air in glowing white lines, absorbed it into the sword, and speared the demon's remains with an iridescent beam. Like that, it and all its minions were erased from existence, reality itself rejecting the objectionable matter that was no longer protected by the greater demon's twisted magic.

Left in silence but for the burning of the city, Arrika considered her next move. All around her, people were collapsing into fervent prayer, but she paid little mind to them as she considered her options for reaching the city docks quickly. Her current manifestation was incomplete, lacking both her pinion and her shield. Of the two, the pinion was the greater loss, for without it her physical body was bound by gravity just like any mortal's, and even the speed at which she might run was far from what it could have been. As she mulled through her options, she touched the hilt of her sword to her shoulder, where it stuck with magnetic force, and then adjusted her glove and gauntlet in a nervous gesture. When she finally took up her sword again and turned to leave, she broke a charred chair leg under her silver greaves.

"The docks?" she asked a random civilian, using a dialect of Caredan that was probably horribly out of date. The man seemed to understand, because he pointed west down main street, apparently indicating that it was a straight shot. Arrika nodded at him, and abandoning all grace, crouched, and then burst into a sprint. The crowd fell over itself to part for her, and soon she broke into the open street, weaving through wreckage and stacks of corpses, trying not to slip in the filth and gore that painted the cobblestones.

When she was clear, she attempted her first gambit, holding out her sword and touching its blade with her free hand. Never slowing, she tapped her sword against a street lamp, setting it to a musical hum quite unlike the hellish vibration she'd summoned earlier. The sound seemed to fill the entire city, and her purpose became obvious when she started to alter the sound until it formed a distinct tune. It was none other than the horse call she had heard Link use dozens of times during their journey together. She didn't expect much, and had actually given up on the idea a minute later as silly. The pressure to reach this other minion fell all the harder upon her, every minute that passed one more when the greater demon might recognize their plan and turn its personal attentions to the city.

Epona's arrival was actually something of a shock, especially since she entered main street by leaping a six foot pile of burning debris and nearly crushed the Archangel on landing. Still, Arrika swallowed her surprise and quickly mounted the great, beautiful creature. There was never even a moment of resistance, despite the mare's wild heart, almost certainly because the horse recognized something of her master in Arrika's person, as well as the tune she'd produced. Together, they made magnificent time down the wide open avenue, even with all the destruction that often threatened to block the way. At any point where an obstacle arose, Arrika cleared it away with a flick of her sword, and sooner than she might have hoped, she arrived in the dock district.

Her fist sign that she'd arrived was an attack by dozens, perhaps hundreds of creatures that varied between octarock-like horrors and strange, hybrid shark-lion-things. Wave after wave seemed to rise out of the very fabric of the destroyed surroundings to assault her, but she obliterated all challengers, leaving their ruined, diced bodies in mounting heaps as she urged Epona toward the waterfront. When she finally broke from the warehouse district and the great nighttime vista of the world's busiest inland port spread out before her, she recognized her great folly. Even her pinion… even the green wind of Farore could not have caused her to arrive in time. The battle was over, and had been for quite a while.

The lakefront was like a scene from the nightmare of a truly disturbed individual. It was dominated by a shocking, almost overpowering display of utter carnage. The bodies of several thousand men, women, and children lay rent to ruin upon the docks, the streets, and floating in the dark water. More creatures were here, searching for wounded to claim, and they were quickly dispatched as Arrika tried to comprehend what could possibly have happened. The nearest she was able to determine was that the demon's terror aura had driven a mass of refugees to attempt escape by boat, only for the panicked mob to find that the water was no safer than any other part of the city. Even with her jaded history, Arrika found her stomach turned by the sheer scale of the genocidal fury. Such was her repulsion that she had almost managed to forget her purpose, until she spotted the great crocodile.

Here the signs of battle were not quite so one-sided, because it became apparent almost immediately that this awful creature had been in a hard-fought contest. The main evidence of this was the dozens of harpoons and ballista bolts jutting from its body, especially those that were actually pinning its enormous bulk to the wood of the city's largest pier. How it had come to be so savaged was at first a mystery, until Arrika noticed the dead zora warriors, or rather, the bits and pieces of them strewn about and floating around. Apparently, the demon had run afoul of the aquatic soldiers, as well as some of Romali's anti-piracy military fleet that was even now burning to the waterline and sinking further out in the lake.

As she prayed silently that their efforts, their noble sacrifices, had been able to save lives, Arrika jumped down from Epona and quickly closed on the pinned demon. It eyed her unpleasantly as she approached, but made no motion, even as she slowed and stalked in more cautiously. Her caution turned out to be quite warranted when its maw suddenly snapped open sideways, revealing hundreds of razor teeth and a tongue shaped like the face and upper-body of a beautiful woman. The female-shaped thing was coated in gore, which it proceeded to rub over its lifelike anatomy in a truly horrifying manner. Arrika blanched, and the thing's head rocketed forward like a cannon shot while she was distracted, its neck extending in a serpentine manner and its teeth clapping together on the Sword Maiden.

Arrika found herself face-to-face-tongue-thing with the demon, but smiling as the demon took its turn to quail. Its attack had been caught well before its teeth could close on the woman, specifically because she'd extended her left arm and right leg to prop its great jaw open. Arrika took no small amount of glee in stabbing the female tongue-thing through the place where its heart might have been, even as it exerted stone-crushing force to try and break her within its mouth. The wound hurt it, to be sure, but the pressure from its mouth did not abate, and was actually threatening to overpower her, her arm and leg straining to keep its teeth back. Thus, before it could mash up her brand new physical body, she sent a massive beam right down the axis of its body, slicing the entire creature neatly in two. The beam went on to thrash a fifty-foot column of water into the air and part the lake down to its mucky bottom, a displacement that sent huge waves for miles in every direction.

It was a simple matter to banish the broken thing after that, and Arrika celebrated the completion of her mission by sliding her sword out of existence, sending it to a hidden place by pressing the tip into her palm like she was sheathing it in her arm. A new peal of thunder and fresh light, along with another roar of unearthly horror, announced that the demon had noticed her activities at last. It wasn't until the sky was ripped apart by multicolored vortexes while the earth shook and the wind howled that Arrika recalled one last person she and Link had set out to rescue together.

"Leeta…" she whispered, cursing herself. As she once again mounted Epona and started to race back across the city, all she could think of was how horribly selfish she'd been. In her delight over this body, over having her powers restored, she'd allowed the Singularity all the time it would need to slay the zora princess. Despite herself, she could not help but feel that act was not nearly as necessary and inevitable as the Singularity Spirits seemed to believe.

**The Place That is Not a Place**

"_What is it doing now_?" Asked the first of wisdom's three aspects, continuing the constant internal dialogue that formulated its decision making process.

"_It seems to have recognized our stratagem, and that it will be unable to wear us down without the mortal souls to power it_." The second aspect answered.

"**The anti-god has initiated a new spell**," Power, the giant of magical energy, interrupted them, "**it has routed all its remaining strength into a barrier, and begun a grand scathing**."

"_A scathing… it seeks to render the land into a dusty wasteland, uninhabitable for a hundred thousand years_." The third aspect of wisdom turned to the first. "_How do we respond_?"

"_We must stop it. A scathing entails an unacceptable level of collateral damage. The demon would be erased in the process, but that level of damage represents a global destabilization, perhaps leading to an apocalyptic spiral. We must banish it on our terms instead_."

"_Agreed_," spoke the second aspect, and "_Indeed,_" echoed the third. "_Suggestions_?"

"**We cannot currently access enough force to break the barrier**," Power informed them. "**Our expenditures have been too much; the demon has husbanded itself more efficiently than we have**."

Courage snarled, startling them all. It was currently controlling all three of their physical manifestations as they battled the demon in the real world. Every sound it made was an indication of how the battle went.

"_How can that be_?" the third aspect queried, "_Are we not as demigods? This nether-cretin cannot possibly be a match for us_."

"_Recall that we are not at optimum output_," cautioned the first aspect, "_and that is putting it in the best possible terms. This situation is still highly disturbing to us_."

"_We continue to wonder why the singularity came to be before the vessels were prepared?_" asked the second aspect, "_Truly that is a mystery. Does it not fly in the face of all we are invested to understand as absolute truth_?"

"_Only mortals can command the Golden Power_," the second aspect quoted from a knowledge that was inherent to their very existence, "_It is the last fragment of the force that created the world, reserved for humanity to defeat the many threats to its existence_."

"_Precisely,_" the first aspect nodded, "_and yet here we are, attempting to command ourselves. Is it any wonder we can access only a fraction of what we truly possess? This is unnatural, a deviation_."

"_Had we any choice? The vessels would be destroyed, they are still too mortal. We are doing the only thing we can_."

"_And what are we doing? Better still, how are we doing it? How are we even talking to one another? A few months ago, we were pure energy. How has it come to this_?"

"_This is our response to mating with our perfect vessels_," the first aspect realigned their thoughts before they could continue to blur together further. "_Our power inflicts an aspect of godhood onto them, and in turn, their mortality is reflected onto us. I propose that we have achieved our limited 'personhood,' the very feature that made us aware as we are now, because our vessels have become a part of us_."

"_An intriguing theory—we shall note it for later exploration_," agreed the second aspect, "_but it raises another mystery. If we have become some kind of… 'people'… through the impact of our vessels, does that mean the same thing happened when we were perfectly mated before, in the genesis era? What happened to those 'selves?' Do we only exist as long as our perfect vessels exist_?"

"**Wisdom, we require direction**," Power reminded the three, "**the scathing will be irreversible, even with the demon's banishment, in a matter of moments**."

"_Indeed, you recall us to ourselves_," the third aspect nodded, "_and we already know what must be done. We merely sought to ensure there was no other way_."

"_Precisely_," the first aspect frowned rather gravely, "_It is not a decision to be made lightly. The vessel disagrees with it, we can tell, even though she is submerged in us. It places disproportionate risk on the brave one, and such consequences as we can predict cause her great unease. It made us want to divine an alternative_."

"_There is none_," the second aspect crossed her arms and sighed, "_We cannot draw upon the power ourselves, we were never meant to function that way. It is a boon from the Goddesses that we have functioned as we have without the vessels in command. Risking the vessel of courage, putting him into command of us all, it is the only feasible alternative to allowing the scathing to occur_."

"_He has achieved much more spiritual durability than the other vessels_," the third aspect rested her chin thoughtfully upon her fingers, "_perhaps due to his contract with the Archangel. He will likely survive. The possible side effects, however_…"

"**It matters not, we have no choice**." Power summed up their argument before it could enter another cycle. Although it rarely made decisions, Power was ever the one to prevent Wisdom from vacillating endlessly in debate with itself. "**Either of the other vessels would be slain, and if one dies, the trinity is broken. We, too, would be undone**."

"_We have yet to reach consensus on that theory_!" the first aspect of Wisdom reminded them, but to little effect.

"**Our course is set**." Power once again summarized Wisdom's will, "**The vessel of Courage will be drawn forth and given control. Such will allow us access to more of our potential, perhaps enough to break this anti-god and return it to the twisting nether that spawned it. His death is not likely, and any consequence short of that will have to be dealt with in its own time**."

"**Agreed**," the three aspects of Wisdom spoke as one.

"**So mote it be**," Power nodded, and then the giant figure standing behind Power's vessel reached around to pluck her hands from the pedestal in the center of the white space. The giant shifted slightly and put the hands on Link's spiritual representation, earning a low, rumbling growl from his gigantic wolf companion.

"**Yes, Courage, we know the vessel we risk is the one where 'you' reside**," Wisdom's three aspects spoke together, "**but this is no time to shrink from duty**." It was exactly the right button to press, and there was no further objection as the two mirror aspects flanking Zelda's spiritual representation pulled her hands from the pedestal and placed them on Link's other side. "**Now, draw him forth, Courage. Make the brave one our focus**."

The great wolf at Link's side reared back and howled, and all the various parts that were present came together behind one single, ultimately still _mortal_ mind.

**Outside Romali's Eastern Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

The three disparate spirits of the Triforce Singularity ceased their futile attempts to bombard the demon out of its entrenchment all at once and zipped together to collapse into a single form in perfect unison. The singular figure bearing the sword, scepter, and crown persisted for half a moment, and then Link awoke to his new situation. Instantly, all balance in the Singularity was lost, and the way it was represented altered accordingly.

The three artifacts of pure light that symbolized the three sides of the triginal perfection upon which all living things are based each vanished, absorbed into the person-shaped light to color it with streamers and starbursts of red, green, and blue. The figure grew as the colors danced over it, twisting and bulging until, instead of a person of woven light, there was a massive, truly _gigantic_ wolf woven of light floating in the sky over the broken Caredan countryside.

At its shoulder, it was tall as the great, ancient walls of Romali, and from nose to rear haunches was a hundred and fifty feet if it was one. The red stripes on its back were each as thick as a grown man was tall, and the blue force markings that traced over its head and muzzle seemed to form a complex, symmetrical symbol. When it snarled, it bore fangs each as long as an infantry pike, and the breath it exhaled seemed to sizzle and spark with undiluted, unstoppable energy. Its eyes, although huge, looked shockingly mundane, and were blue as the patterns tracing around them.

As Link became fully aware, he was struck through with agony, and the massive wolf bayed in its pain, howling out a sound that stabbed at the soul. To comprehend the enormous strain placed upon the goat rancher from an isolated backwoods province would be impossible, but its effect was obvious. His pain was staggering, and the great wolf fell to the ground to impact with a feather's caress, its body of pure light almost weightless even without Link's active control.

Link felt his mind burn under the strain, but unconsciousness would not claim him, and he was forced to face down much more than any human psyche was ever meant to deal with at once. Knowledge, the knowledge of a thousand, thousand books was arranged at his beck and call, but he could not remember how to form sounds other than screams, much less the words of a question. Power, boundless power, the power to move the heavens above, to carve a world in his own image, or to make life of a sort from the fabric of his very imagination came to his fingertips, but he couldn't make his fingertips move. And of course, there, in the pit of his mind, there was that _other_ him, the one that was never satisfied, that would fight a battle for the pure joy of combat, and defend the weak to the grave and beyond, no matter what.

It was that thing, then, the familiar, constant companion which became his only anchor in a storm of boundless potential. By locking onto that, and only that, the warrior was able to fight down the overpowering enormity of the other forces buffeting his consciousness. As it turned out, that part of him had only one thing on its mind, and that singular focus was passed onto Link as he entrusted his existence to the unreasonable voice that he had never quite fully believed in before this moment. In this way, he weathered the storm, and opened his eyes a beast of titanic proportions.

The furious, single-minded entity upon which Link rode knew only a blind, perfectly dedicated lust for the total destruction of the great demon that even now threatened to send Romali and most of Careda back to the time of nothingness before creation. The demon had changed itself, collapsed down to a pulsing tower of flesh entrenched in a solid base that had once been its arms, legs, and body, but Link recognized it. In particular, he recognized the dozens of eyes that graced the top of the tower, projecting black beams into a gathering knot just above it, a knot that grew and grew as the scathing approached critical mass. He also recognized Leeta where she was stretched spread-eagle and bound to the front of the tower, just under the eyes.

There was a moment of sympathy in that recognition, a moment where Link the man, who had befriended and protected a young, vulnerable woman in her time of need saw that woman in distress again. Her scales were so dry now that they flaked and peeled away in some places, and her long, beautiful fins, sign of her blooming royal fertility, were torn and tattered, almost falling away. Her eyes were open, but they saw nothing, merely staring blankly into the world, a sign of a mind that had been broken on the selfish whim of greedy, evil _fools_. The recognition ended there, because the furious voice in his mind would be denied no longer.

The god-wolf came to its feet in a flash, reared back, and howled with an anguish that was also anger, righteous fury, vengeful madness, and so much more that words simply cannot express. When it lowered its head to level a new, deadly gaze on the demon, Link saw nothing where Leeta hung but the beating heart of his enemy, the target that must be crushed to end its threat. In that moment, Link and his furious companion were of one mind, and the Golden Power responded to his will, granting him power to fulfill his wishes.

Link's wish was not framed in words, but in a more primal manner, and yet its content could not be misunderstood. The Triforce knew this wish, for it was the same wish that the previous perfect vessel of Courage had made time and again during the Genesis Wars. Quite simply, it rendered the opponent's essential energy vulnerable to karnak, and in so doing, rendered it fatally vulnerable to a being such as Link.

In three bounding leaps, the god-wolf was upon the demon and its dome-shaped shield, battering the magical wall with far, far more force than the simple aggregate of its inertia. What's more, the blow landed on a weak point the shield had not possessed a half-instant before, and this proved to be more than enough to turn the tables on the demon in its final, desperate moment. The wall shattered, letting out a sound of mortal death knells as the souls that had been its construction were released. The demon had half a second to recognize that its destruction had arrived, and then the god-wolf, Link the great beast, darted in with an agile strike and gripped onto Leeta with its teeth.

There was an arching of the huge wolf's back, lightning and faerie fire spilled from its lips, and then the flesh of the great demon gave way like shattering porcelain. Black smoke poured from the wound and from the wolf's lips, where Leeta lay in a huge lump of demonic sludge that was already losing coherence and dripping through its fangs. Of course, simply removing the demon's blood binding from its body would not destroy it—it didn't even stop it from continuing to construct the scathing. It was only when Link bit down one more time, crushing Leeta's small body between its jaws, that the spell was finally undone.

The world became suddenly quiet, and even seemed to freeze in time, so perfect was the stillness that fell across the land. First the demon's spell unraveled, the knot of black smoke twisting on an odd axis before spinning harmlessly apart. Then, the creature's body itself began to turn to dust from top to bottom, blowing away on a sudden wind, the particles vanishing from existence as the wind carried them off. In moments, nothing remained, nothing but the devastation of the battle, the thousands upon thousands of murders that had powered the demon's rampage, and a strange sphere of blackness that floated languidly a few feet above where the demon had once been, invisible in the darkness.

As soon as the demon was banished, all the power that had come through the Triforce's reaction to its presence became many times the burden to maintain. Link's frail hold on the massive powers he'd been handed was wiped away as he fell unconscious, and the great wolf reverted to the human shape of the three-in-one, causing Leeta's limp corpse to fall from its vanished jaws to the earth. The Triforce Singularity split up into three distinct spheres of light, one cored with each color of the Triforce, and the spheres became solid beams that split the night with their light as the energy returned to the ciphers they had left behind.

**Under Romali's Eastern Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

Epona had given it her all, but the Sword Maiden arrived at Romali's east gate only just in time to see that she was too late. The battle was over, and ended in victory, but the price had been steep. She saw the corpse drop from the great wolf's teeth and knew there had been no last minute gambit to turn convention on its head, spit in the eye of fate, defeat all odds, and save the zora child.

Arrika couldn't help but think that this had not been the kind of victory Link was used to, a victory where the day was cleanly saved and the only misfortune was the people who misunderstood his amazing abilities. Rather, this was the kind of victory Arrika was used to, a victory of bitterly cold comfort. Such was always the way with demons, which by their very nature could bring torment to humanity, even when they were turned back from the true heights of their ambitions. Their very existence was the ultimate crime of the divos, a betrayal that would never cease to haunt the gods and their children.

Arrika felt the power loaned to her by the Triforce bleed away, even as she quickly closed on the spot where she knew Link would be waiting. Before she was halfway there, it was already a serious effort to keep her body in one piece, every second threatening to have her odds and ends dissolving into the mist she'd built it from. It was only the force of her will that kept it together, the desire to keep that beautiful, perfect form as long as she possibly could. It turned out to be enough, and she arrived next to Link with a solid body.

Link was sitting back on a lump of fractured earth when she found him, and she quickly produced her sword from nothingness and tossed it over to bury itself in the ground before him. She hopped gracefully from an exhausted Epona and slumped down next to him. It was a long moment before he turned to look at her.

"Who—Ah… Arrika?" Link recognized her almost immediately, and the ancient spirit found herself surprised to be incredibly pleased by the fact.

"Yeah, guilty," she smirked at him, "how do I look?"

"You look like you just stepped through heaven's gates," Link told her, and then turned back to the nighttime wasteland he'd helped to create.

The unassuming honesty of the compliment was far more powerful than the words themselves. If Arrika's physical shell had possessed blood, she probably would have blushed. As it was, she just allowed the body to melt into mist and dissolve away. In seconds, she was sitting next to him in her phantasmal, child-like form once more.

"_That was just an echo_," she told him once the mist had cleared. "_A rather cruel taste of what I once was. To have it back, only to lose it all over again… but never mind. How does it feel to win a battle against ultimate evil when everything was stacked against you_?"

"Wonderful," Link lied, "All hail the conquering hero."

The young man spat, and then there was silence for quite some time. Frankly, Arrika simply knew better than to try and comfort him. He wasn't done venting yet.

"I've been sitting here…" Link broke the silence, but stalled. He waited, then tried again. "I've been sitting here, and I've been trying to… I don't know… I just…" He stalled out again. "I remember pain, and I remember meeting with Zelda and… some other girl… and I remember being bigger than the world… but that's all. Now I'm just a man again, I suppose, but for the first time in my life… I've… _failed_."

Link shook his head, as though trying to shake off some great fatigue. A low growl passed his lips, but quickly became a cough.

"For the first time, I set out to rescue someone I was determined to protect and… well… not only did I fail, but I'm the one who killed her. That's the other thing I remember—the feeling of crushing her between my teeth."

"_Link, there was no other way_—" Arrika began, but Link would have none of it.

"I don't really recall even trying all that hard to find another way, not that it matters now." Link snarled, baring his teeth, and then slapped a hand to his face like he might rub away his frustrations. There was another long silence.

"What I was saying before was, I've been sitting here trying to cry." Once he said it, he seemed to calm down slightly, but his jaw still clenched. "It seems to me like I should be mourning for her, you know? The crazy little fishstick was in love with me, for some damn reason, and she stayed here because she felt safe with me watching her! Now look where it got her! Shouldn't that, you know, crush me from the inside out, or something?"

"_Everyone mourns in different ways, Link_," Arrika tried another classic platitude. He simply shook his head again. He looked like he wanted to growl some more, but he didn't this time.

"I'm not so sure… I just… I feel weak. All that power, Arrika, all that unbelievable power… and I couldn't save one little girl. The Triforce grants wishes, right? Why didn't I make the right wish to save her? Why couldn't I protect her? What does that mean?"

"_It means you've finally hit the grandmaster level_," Arrika replied, and Link was shocked to hear something so different than an awkwardly delivered statement of meaningless sympathy.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"_Link, take this as a lesson from a ghost that was once worshiped as the right hand to creator deities: the more power you have, the harder it is to get precisely what you desire_." Arrika sighed, and once again the weight of her experience colored her childish frame in a most peculiar way. "_All power comes at a price, an _onus_, Link. The mark of the evil is that they force others to pay that price for them, and the mark of the noble is that they take that onus upon their own shoulders_."

"_You probably could have saved Leeta tonight, but only by stealing her away and leaving the demon to sow Armageddon until sunrise. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands more would have died, and who knows how many it might have been if it had cast that scathing? Your power did not get you what you wanted, not exactly, but when the time came to decide who would bear the burden of your power, who would pay the price because you were the one and only being who could choose who would live or die, you made the sacrifice and took the burden onto yourself_."

"So I'm noble?" Link scoffed, "I made _Leeta_ pay the price. I'm a murderer and a weakling."

"_Link, you _are_ noble_," Arrika turned to look at him as she said it, "_You're so damn noble, you punish yourself for anything less than perfect victory. Leeta paid the ultimate price because evil, greedy fools wanted to play with the fire that consumes the whole of reality, and if it hadn't been her, it would have been some other blameless zora child. You made the best of an impossible situation Link, and you probably saved this entire country. Living with Leeta's death is simply the onus you've shouldered for the power it took to do that, both the physical, and the moral_."

"Enough!" Link roared, an undertone of viciousness coloring the word. He took a few deep breaths, and then whispered again, "enough."

Despite his explosion, Arrika's words seemed to change something in the young man, freeing up what had been frozen in his heart. Even as he growled and snarled out his frustrations, he managed to shed a handful of tears. The Sword Maiden almost regretted letting her body go, the urge to at least place a hand on his shoulder was so enormous. It was so easy to forget that this was just a boy in many respects, a warrior who had never faced defeat, and never had to truly bear the weight of responsibility for the lives of others.

To sacrifice anyone, even for the greater good, was a travesty. Link would never admit that he had been manipulated, he would never shift the blame to the Triforce, to Wisdom's chilling calculations, Power's dispassionate urgings, or the sheer ferocity that dwelt within his own soul. When the time came, he was the one in command, the one who picked who would live and die, and he would make no excuses for his decision. The fact that it weighed upon him so heavily was perhaps the greatest sign of his integrity that anyone could have ever hoped to see. Once again, Arrika felt the hand of the divine must be involved in delivering her to his side, and that a greater purpose by far lay in their future.

That was last moment Arrika had free to ruminate about the future, because it was just then that Link started to have some kind of attack. Unlike all the many, many other inexplicable attacks Arrika had faced down since she'd taken up with the fated hero, this one came from within his own body, and it left her utterly helpless to assist. One moment, he was quietly coming to terms with recent events, the next he was keeled over in the dirt, making a noise that was half cough, half growl. It became more growl for a moment, and then he was twisted in agony, every muscle in his body spasming at once, and the noise became all scream.

If it had been some kind of physical injury, Arrika would have known through her connection to him. If it had been some wound, some internal malady, she could have sent him some of her strength, meager as it was after the long battle. But it was none of these things, and the phantom could only watch, helpless, as her contractor twisted and bucked on the ground, emitting noises that became more distressing with every moment. In desperation, Arrika did the only thing she could think of—she phased into his body on the off chance that she would better sense where this strange attack was coming from. It didn't help, but it did put her in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.

The odd, lingering sphere of blackness that had not vanished with the rest of the demon had been slowly making its way toward Link since the moment the Triforce Singularity had decamped. Until Link suffered his attack, it remained far enough away to be inconspicuous, blending into the smoke and the dark such that one might have walked right through it without ever noticing. For some reason, however, Link's seizure seemed to spur it on, and it transformed into a mass of swarming tentacles and abandoned its idle progress toward the hero, taking off like it finally had someplace to be.

The mass arrived above Link, rose up, and collapsed onto him mere instants after Arrika phased into his body. It mounded up above him until every bit of it had arrived, and then it formed a perfect dome of sheer, dark ooze. At last, it flared with golden light, the staggering brightness of it casting infinite shadows through the swirling smoke and debris that choked the night.

Although he was in no position to appreciate it, Link had just inherited the demon's power—all the force it had possessed that was not the blood or souls of the innocent. In that moment, every drop of potential that he had transformed with his Triforce wish came to him as its rightful owner, just as if he'd slain some great twilight beast, felled a brazen elemental, or broken a vile dragon upon his blade. The difference was that the demon was a foe of _consequence_, and the prize in strength for defeating it was far more than a paltry measure of stamina and resilience.

In moments, two beams shot from the dome of light, one to find each of the other Triforce bearers and grant them their share. And yet, even with only a third of the spoils, Link was energized beyond his wildest dreams for a few brief moments. It just happened that those moments were also a period where the structure of his life energy, the same massively overabundant life energy that made him larger than life as a warrior, was dangerously out of synch with the shape of his body, so much so that his flesh had begun to rip itself apart.

All the forces racing through him sought balance, the same balance he had been proceeding toward in a slow and agonizing manner before absorbing the demon's energy. To his benefit, the power eased the process of transformation in the way that only magic tinged with darkness could, the same facilitating effect he had experienced time and again when twilight magic had threatened to transform him into a living phantom with the rest of Hyrule. At that time, the form of a beast had been a compromise to protect his energy from being suborned into the phantom twilight place. Now, the form of the beast was the true shape of his soul, the shape it had taken on to guard him from being purged in the flames of the Triforce's overwhelming power. That fact made all the difference, that and the way the Sword Maiden's phantom was mixed into the equation.

To make a process of divine intervention into layman's terms, let it suffice to say that Link's body was rendered into pure energy for a few moments, that energy was enhanced by the force it absorbed from the demon, and then that energy found balance in a new form. The final transformation captured the new ideal, the new necessities of the situation, and produced flesh most suited to both of the troubled souls now bound to the Triforce of Courage. When the light suddenly faded to nothing, there was no longer a man in armor lying prostrate in agony. Instead, there was a wolf the size of a pony, and a teenage girl with hip-length blond hair.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

Although I really enjoyed this chapter, and writing it more or less saved me from having to abandon this project out of boredom, about a third of my regular readers thought it ruined the whole fiction with a jarring change in tone and pace. For a long time, that fact sent me into a spiraling depression and had me spinning off apologies and half-assed justifications left and right. It also drained me of about ninety percent of my motivation to continue. I got over it and cranked out a few more chapters, but this reaction was really very telling to me.

I was writing this story for all the wrong reasons—the main one being to garner the adulation of internet strangers. Such things have no value, and to slave and scrape in pursuit of them is truly pathetic. After a long, long time trying to ignore the subject, I eventually just got the hell over it. With the damage already done, I resolved to go back to challenging myself with new plot devices and a new web of intrigue and action to suit the sharply altered tone and pace of the story.


	22. Strange Fate

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 8: Strange Fate**

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda came awake suddenly, staggered by the uncomfortable sensation of life returning to her body in a gradual crawl. A wave of sensation spread out from her heart until it reached the tips of her arms and legs, and only then was she able to slump backward into her plush desk chair. She was back in front of her desk, an array of guards and palace advisers gathered around in confused and muttering clumps, their horrified attention universally upon her. For a moment, there was nothing where her memory of recent events should be, but that ended with a sudden and overpowering sense of unease. Directionless fear crept into her chest, bringing with it vague memories of Link and someone she didn't know, along with a place that she couldn't picture now that she thought of it. The sensation was infuriating, just like trying to grasp the fading memories of an especially vivid dream.

"What are you all doing in here?" Zelda asked, trying to shake the haze of inexplicable discomfort from her thoughts. At her words, everyone jumped like she'd snarled at them, and this brought the Princess' attention more fully back to the moment. Something was definitely wrong.

"Is—is that _you_, Your Majesty?" asked a young serving girl from her hiding place behind two armed guards that were caught trying to decide whether or not to level their weapons in Zelda's direction. This last particularly disturbed the young monarch, who stood up and slapped both hands down on her desk. The noise made the room jump again.

"Holy Din! Is it me? _Really_? Honestly, who else would it be?" Everyone in the room retreated a few steps, and Zelda immediately regretted shouting. Something was _absolutely_, definitely wrong here. Mind still in a fog, Zelda would not have time to discover what was bothering everyone before she was interrupted.

Zelda never saw it coming herself, but anyone who had been watching the space between her and her huge balcony windows, and could also slow down time, would have noticed a fractional-second of motion before her whole body lit up like a bonfire. Something entered her and fused with her body, and now everyone still watching either fled or fell to their knees and prostrated themselves in the face of the hot force pouring out of Zelda.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, the light dissipated, and Zelda toppled back into her chair. Immediately, everyone crowding at the door froze, coming to a standstill and then filing back into Zelda's chamber in an orderly reshuffling. Those cowering or praying on the floor also gathered themselves, and soon all the bystanders were arranged in neat rows. Their faces were universally slack and their eyes were clouded with a sparkling golden haze.

"Please awaken," Zelda heard, as the daze cleared abruptly and she found herself perfectly lucid again.

"Who was that?" the princess asked, and then noticed the rows of dazed retainers arranged so eerily before her, "what's going on here?"

"Do not concern yourself, darling, we are merely rearranging their memories to something more convenient to our interests," another voice, and yet somehow the _same_ voice, said.

"It is entirely premature for rumors of our power to reach untrustworthy ears," said the first, now quite familiar-sounding female.

Two sets of hands came in from either side to gently touch Zelda on each shoulder, and she jumped with fright. She quickly glanced to her left, and her body went rigid in shock at what she saw. Almost as an afterthought, she glanced to her right, too, and now her long hair fought to stand up on end. The young woman went white as her skirts as she stumbled back into her chair yet again. It was now obvious to her why the voices were so familiar.

"We must act quickly to cover this incident," the perfect, identical clone of Zelda that stood on the original's left reminded them all.

"Don't forget about Ashei and Auru," the perfect, identical clone of Zelda that stood on the original's right chimed in. "They're probably trying to manage some crowd control after our unexpected and public 'episode.'"

"I will draw them here. It is better to take care of these things all in one cohesive 'sweep.'"

"Agreed. Now, about the cover story we should implant to replace the missing hours…"

The two clones spoke over Zelda's head as a tick crept into her cheek and her long, slender ears twitched uncontrollably. It was not until this instant that she realized that her mind was totally alone inside her skull… the other two 'cycles,' were completely absent.

**A Grassy Knoll**

Link awoke, or rather, 'became aware' to find himself in a place he had never seen before. It was not a threatening place by any means—the sky was blue and placid, the green, Hylian grass extended in an endless, verdant meadow unto the horizon, and it was warm. He was wearing his most comfortable work clothes and a huge, wide-brimmed straw hat, poised in perfect repose under the shade of an apple tree, more at peace than at any time in living memory. Still, there was a strangeness to it all, a dream-like quality that refused to stop nagging at him, until at last he had to release his idyllic relaxation and concentrate to figure out what it was. That was when he noticed the gargantuan wolf sitting regally erect only inches to his right.

"I remember you," Link said, rather stupidly, because he _did_. "You were there… in that _place_." Memories came flooding back to him—a desperate battle, death galore, and agonizing, crushing defeat. Surrounded by perfect serenity, the torment leached slowly from his heart, until he was left calm, empty, and merely miserable.

Eventually, he could no longer cling to his pain, and sat up to look out at the impossible beauty around him, shaking his head at the sight of it. "Goddesses… not another crazy landscape." Although he was sick and tired of the strangeness in his life, Link could not come to be truly frustrated at his new predicament. He really did like it here—so much that it was actually inexplicable. "Where am I now?" he sighed, resigned to this situation already.

The wolf responded immediately, springing up and trotting down the hill, only to turn and face back up at Link. It was terrifically huge for a wolf, close to as tall at the shoulder as Link himself, and nine feet from nose to tail, _at least_. It seemed to draw Link's attention almost magnetically, until at last Link noticed the glowing golden triangles burning in the dark eternity of its eyes. Much of Link's calm goodwill evaporated despite his delightful environs, and he deflated into a morose fit almost instantly.

"Just what I need…" Link muttered, "the Goddesses pester me, even in this paradise. Where are we, anyway?" He addressed the great beast, "If I can impose upon the divine to explain itself for FREAKING ONCE IN MY LIFE!"

That outburst caught Link himself off guard, and he clapped his mouth shut. As calm as he now was, a well of bitterness was lurking in the background, already poisoning what it could not overwhelm. As he brooded, the wolf whined to gain his attention, and when he glanced up at the sound, his eyes were once again captivated by the wolf's emblazoned features. Suddenly, Link was not facing a strange spirit-animal, but a strange spirit-person, shaped like an animal. The effect of the sudden conceptual connection was so strong that Link didn't even blink when the wolf began to speak. It might have helped that this was far from Link's first talking wolf-shaped spirit guide.

_You ask where you are, and the answer is: you are Home_,_ duh. I figured that much, at least, was obvious._ The thoughts came to Link, but not as a though they were being spoken to his mind the way Arrika managed, but as a feeling that bubbled up from the depths of Link's emotional core. The wolf was, for lack of a more precise term, speaking to his soul.

"Home?" Link asked, and once again, bitterness wrenched forth from his heart, "I left my only home behind. I left before all of this," he waved vaguely at the countryside, but he meant something else entirely, "could find me there, as it found me in Ghent, and found me in Romali. This is probably the only good choice I've managed to make lately. At least while I'm out here being put through fate's grinder, everyone back home is safe from the 'blast radius.'"

The wolf barked sharply, jarring Link back to attention, and once again the words were like feelings floating up from somewhere in his stomach to collide gently with his brain.

_Pull yourself together_, said the wolf. _You're a disgrace. You were chosen for this duty. Act like it._

'Chosen,' it said. That was all, as though that simple word explained it all. It epitomized everything about his mad existence that drove Link to distraction. 'Fate,' 'The Hand of the Goddesses,' whatever one called it, it swirled around him like a tide he could never hope to tread against. For almost a year, a mad, nightmarish year of horror and heartbreak and agony, he had been a plaything of forces he couldn't conceive of, much less comprehend.

What was more, he'd _enjoyed_ it. That little voice in his heart sang with joy to feel the thrill of battle, the supreme ecstasy of wading into a crowd of monsters and laying about with a blade. The feeling that came over him when he confronted something huge and terrifying defied description, and was so extreme as to cause him to thirst for it during the long droughts between gargantuan opponents. It was rather absurd really, and it never seemed more clearly outrageous to him than it did as he boggled at the wolf's upsetting, brief condemnation.

"I was _chosen_," Link repeated, unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. "That's all anyone will ever tell me." He thought about that a moment longer, and amended, "Everyone but Arrika, anyway. What is it about you inhuman spiritual entities that makes you think you can rule our lives, dictate our fates? We're not pieces to be maneuvered against your enemies. Why can't this battle between 'good' and 'evil' stay out of our world? Look at what happened to Romali! In a single night, all human affairs were wiped away, destroyed as though they never existed at all!"

_Suck it up, _the wolf threw his outrage right back in his face. _Evil isn't going to send an embroidered invitation in advance, asking you where would be most convenient for a brawl. Didn't your friend with the fancy sword already explain this to you? You prevented an apocalyptic spiral! That damsel you're suffering over was only one of thousands of casualties you didn't manage to prevent, which pales compared to the tens of thousands you saved._

"But I _didn't_ save _her_!" Link spat, "I screwed up, and that kid paid my bill! I'm a loser and a murderer, and—"

_Idiot_! The wolf darted forward and bit Link on the wrist, chomping down and sending a bolt of agony up his arm. Link screamed in pain, and a blast of wind shot across the landscape, sending the grasses and tree into a violent dance. Link threw a quick left cross at the wolf's muzzle, but his hand passed right through it. He tried an overhand blow next, but had even less luck, tumbling down the side of the grassy hill with the beast's needle-teeth scraping his wrist bones. He landed on a pile of weeds with the wolf on top of him, his whole arm on fire from the pain.

"ARHG! Stop! Let go! What do you want from me?" Link pleaded, although it came out more like a threat, the murderous intent in his eyes clear to see.

_I want you to wake up!_ The wolf growled viciously and ground its teeth as the words sizzled in Link's chest. _So you lost one, so what? Is this pathetic little bitch all that remains of an unmatched warrior after a single defeat?_

"I should have done something! I had a duty to protect her, and instead, I killed her!"

_Are you still moaning about that?_ The wolf thrashed its muzzle back and forth, dragging Link's arm around through an agonizing dance that seemed to draw sympathetic motions from the grass around them as the gale winds blew ever fiercer. _If you insist on throwing a fit, can't you at least lose it over your original, unbelievable, spectacular failure? You know, that one you made all on your own, without any gods or demons to share the blame? Things could have been very different today…_

"NO!" Link's eyes went wide and his body fell limp, pain still blazed through him, but his expression slackened.

_Yes._ There was no sympathy in the wolf's tone, but it eased its bone-crushing grip on his forearm ever so slightly. _I knew you couldn't fail to realize it. You have a talent for lying to yourself, especially for lying to yourself, _about_ yourself. It's really annoying._

"It's not—" Link tried to voice a protest, then realized he could find none. What he had been experiencing so far was little more than a petulant guilt, anger at the outside forces that had destroyed his life, thousands of lives—_more_, through the ages. "Farore forgive me…" was all he was able to muster, when the true magnitude of his failure finally settled in. He marinated in a bleak pit for several minutes before he finally croaked out his testament.

"I should have controlled the power. I mean, I should have learned to control it." Without changing his tone, he managed to express an ocean of blame with those words, all focused upon himself. "It's the Triforce, for crying out loud, it could have saved her from _ten_ demon lords! But… I never even _tried_—hell, I've been trying my level best to pretend it didn't exist! I couldn't handle it, and instead, it handled me. Leeta died because I was too weak. Because I didn't want to be a freak."

Link said nothing else after that. He seemed to fade into a mild catatonia, despite a vigorous new session of grinding and thrashing from the very annoyed wolf. When it realized its first gambit had been totally counter-productive, the phantom changed its tactics.

_So that's it?_ The wolf released Link's arm, and the pain and windstorm died in the same instant. _Link the great warrior is done for—and why? Because he got in over his head one time? Because for once, luck and allies couldn't cover for his weakness? _Link came back to his senses just in time to notice the beast glowering at him with a very human expression of utter disgust._ You make me sick. I don't even know you._

"How could you know me?" Link muttered, turning away as the wolf stepped off of him and flounced away in a huff. "How could you even begin to understand what I'm going through?"

_How?_ The wolf turned back, snarling. _You mean you haven't figured it out yet? Goddesses, you are hopeless. Maybe this will help._

In an instant, the phantom wolf was instead a phantom man. Link responded to his challenge by turning back his way, just in time to find the other standing above him. He was startled, but only for a moment.

"You're not a messenger from the gods, or the lingering soul of a long-dead knight," Link admitted, banging his head gently on the grass mounds beneath him to punish his own stupidity.

_Nope_. The man had the decency not to rub it in, not even with a dirty look. He was too busy being viciously disappointed to bother with a snide expression, anyway.

"I guess I always knew you and I would meet like this," Link sighed, sitting up. When he was on his feet again, standing next to the man who had been a wolf, it was impossible to doubt the truth. Link was standing next to a perfect, phantom copy of himself. "Triforce of Courage."

_What_? The phantom's glower deepened, at which point he hauled off and decked Link with a straight right that flipped him head over heels and back onto his bum again. The stunned farmhand wobbled a time or two and then flopped flat on his back.

"I… uh… got it wrong… huh?" Link groaned.

_You got it wrong_, the phantom replied.

"But, the Triforce, in your eyes… I thought…"

_Have you checked your own eyes lately?_ When Link only groaned and deflated into a deeper slump, the phantom rolled his eyes, Triforce symbols and all, and then started to scoff.

_Little Link, always so eager to blame the other. You could never accept that I was truly a part of you. A sparkly bit of magic geometry didn't make me inside you, it just gave me a voice. Of course, you helped out a whole ton by always insisting that I was a foreigner._

"The voice…" Link finally realized, "the little, vicious one…?"

_That's me!_ The phantom seemed delighted that he was finally recognized, _or rather, that's you. The fact that you consider us separate represents some deep-seated problems on your part. Just think about how you feel in battle, while we're one and the same, and you will know your true self._

"I… don't…" Link's protest died on his lips. For some time, he lay in the grass of 'Home,' this place that soothed his heartache like nothing else, and considered all he'd done since he'd first identified that voice. Always it exhorted him to travel the world, seek out adventure, and battle for the sheer, untainted joy of it all. The greater the danger, the more powerful the voice, the more urgent his need for the thrill of combat, and the greater his ecstasy. It was what allowed him to kill, to delight in the feral grip of life-and-death struggle, and to accept the cold, grisly efficiency of the _ambuscade_ without hesitation. He didn't like that it was true, at times he even hated it. Unfortunately, the phantom seemed ready to beat the denial out of him, so, resigned, he tried at last to let it go.

Link offered the phantom his hand from the ground, taking it entirely off guard. After a moment of cautious consideration, Link was hefted to his feet, and the twins stood inches apart once more.

"Maybe… you are a real part of who I am," Link said, making his first concession. "Triforce or no, maybe I'm a combat junkie, and adventure addict. A… killer. According to everyone who would know, I was born different, predisposed to being the warrior of the century, or something like that. I suppose… I can't simply ignore you."

_Really?_ The phantom suddenly seemed even less distinct than before, fading away before Link's eyes. _Does this mean you're ready to listen?_

"Go ahead, what have I got to lose? Maybe you have an insight that I've been afraid to face. Let's just hope that my acknowledging this conversation doesn't mean that I've finally gone off the deep-end."

_Lots of people talk to themselves,_ the phantom replied, _now forget about that. I need to ask you a few simple questions. Hopefully, they'll show you that its time for you to stop wallowing in your disgrace and face facts. I think the fact that I'm here at all means, somewhere inside, you know it is time._

"Right. So, shoot… I guess."

_What did you learn from that battle?_ As soon as he asked the question, the phantom drew back its fist and wound its wrist menacingly. Link had opened his mouth to say something self-pitying by reflex, but now snapped it shut. The fist lowered, and Link decided to actually give the question a bit of thought.

"Well, I learned not to trust the gods," Link eventually answered. Feeling a little less sure of himself, he added, "Also, it's better to keep the demons from ever being summoned in the first place."

_Anything else_?

"Yeah," Link suddenly found his muddy boots quite interesting, "I'm not the meanest thing that ever walked under the stars."

_Good lessons, right?_ The phantom slapped Link on the shoulder, getting him to buck up a little. _Rusl always said: a man learns more from a single defeat than from a hundred victories. At least, back when he could still whoop us with practice swords, he said it all the time._

"I always thought he was just trying to cheer me up, keep me from quitting. A month later, I could take him in two out of five bouts."

_Anyway, take the lessons to heart. Don't let what was lost here be in vain. Now you know you can't trust the gods to save lives. They don't care about you and me, or any other human, as long as they can keep the world running. I think we've been wrong to assume they're maneuvering us around to protect people. It's beginning to look like they only care about the big picture._

"If you twist up your thoughts just right and stare at it cock-eyed, you can almost see some justification in it." Link sighed, and then spat into the tall grass. "Preserve the world first. Otherwise, what's the point in having people to live there?"

_Preserve existence_, the phantom agreed, _defend life, promote justice_._ Sounds like something a philosopher would come up with. Treating people like pawns to be disposed of without a second thought. Makes you want to go build a temple to their glory, doesn't it?_

"Oh? Is that the priority list?" Link matched his phantom's bitter smile. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Who cares if a few lives, or a few hundred lives, are chewed up by their manipulations if it means the sun will rise tomorrow?" Link thought of Leeta, who could have been saved with a word if the gods had cared. Or if he could have been bothered to learn his own powers, instead of hiding from them. Then he thought of Arrika, who had been bound in servitude for an amount of time that defied imagining. Had there really been no other course to reach the same result, or was it a matter of efficiency, where lives were traded for time and energy? There was no way to know the answer, but he knew what he felt was true, and slowly, so slowly that he didn't even notice, the bitterness in his heart found a new target. "They could at least have had the decency to ask for volunteers."

The phantom considered Link with a bemused expression. It grinned, and then actually began to laugh in a sudden explosion of noise. Link found himself smiling despite himself, and then he was laughing along with it. The field reverberated with their mirth for a full minute.

_The choice_, the phantom eventually said,_ is either servitude, or the end of all we hold dear_. _Who could fail to volunteer?_

"Ha!" Link punctuated his own amusement. "And that's how the goddesses make a man their slave. 'Abandon your happiness and march through horror, or you'll lose it all anyway.' As if having no choice in the matter is supposed to make me _less_ ticked off…"

_Enough,_ the phantom caught Link's attention again, _there's one more question. Tell me Link, what do you want to do now?_

"Easy," Link said immediately, because it was. "I want to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. No more failures."

_But do you know how to achieve that?_

"I… I need more power. I need to become good enough to make up for the work the gods can't be bothered with. There shouldn't have to be victims, just to keep our world running."

_So… what will be your route to power? OUR route to power?_

This time Link did pause. How many men had contemplated that question? How many of those had wanted to protect something, or possessed similarly benign intentions? How many of them wound up like Zant, or Gannondorf, or even Duke Orlouge or that Troll Queen? He had never wanted to be in this position, had fought to avoid facing this very question for so long now, it seemed he'd been doing nothing else for months. Guilt stabbed at him anew—if he had faced this sooner, would he have been ready for that demon? Would Leeta be alive right now if he hadn't been running from this with all his might?

"The Triforce," Link eventually managed to reply. He looked at his hand, and found it to be unremarkable in this dreamy wonderland. To look at it now, it was just a calloused paw belonging to a muscle-bound farmhand. "I need to learn how to use the Triforce. I mean, _really_ use it."

The phantom only nodded. It was so indistinct now, it was little more than an outline with an intense grin.

"And…" this time Link sighed extra deeply, "Arrika and her sisters. They need me, and I need them. I was going to help her anyway, now I get to feel like a liar for having a personal motive behind the quest."

_Its not like her motives are as pure as the driven snow,_ the voice bubbling in Link's guts was now more of a gentle, tickling sensation. _Don't let them use us without exacting due compensation._

The phantom was almost gone. Link decided there was one last thing to say, and preferred his hand in peace once again. The phantom took it without hesitation this time.

"Maybe you aren't a total nuisance. I'll try not to disregard you out of hand, vicious one."

_Maybe you aren't a total pussy. Just remember not to take shit from anybody, alright?_

The phantom was practically no more, hand still clasped to Link's. The urge to have the final word was overwhelming, and so Link stopped trying to resist it.

"Don't think this means I'm going to start stabbing every beefy stranger who looks at me cross-eyed."

_Don't think this means you'll stop wanting to._ And the phantom was gone.

Some time passed, and Link spent it enjoying the perfection of 'Home' and examining his feelings. He was still hurting, but he had a path now. The bitterness no longer eclipsed his entire future, and the urge to crawl into a gutter and die was gone. Still, the future he now faced filled him with nothing less than dread. When he realized this, he actually felt genuinely better.

Somehow, the fact that he could fear something mundane like the call to power was the most comforting realization he'd had in ages. Whether unfocused psychological aversion was a blind spot in the Triforce of Courage, or some kind of anti-megalomania fail-safe, he'd been afraid of the power all along, so much so that it had controlled his behavior. He'd never wanted it, still didn't want it, and wasn't looking forward to searching for it. As far as he was concerned, that was how it should be. The day when he lusted for power over the lives of others, when he considered it not a grotesque responsibility, but his proper due, was the day that he would slit his own throat. If the Goddesses were willing, he'd still feel this way if, or when, that day actually arrived.

For a moment, Link wondered how he was supposed to escape this wonderful place and get back into the stink of reality. Then he noticed a storm brewing on the horizon. He set his course without a second thought.

**The Eastern Steppes**

Aziza came back to life quietly, experiencing much the same discomfort as Zelda. She was alone in the tent she normally shared with her twin sister Nebure and her lover Jamal, and she spent a few moments breathing heavily and scrambling for a grip on her sanity before the power legacy from the demon came to her and interrupted her solitude. When she digested that, at last, she managed to stagger forward to the tent flap and collapse halfway into the brilliant wasteland sunlight. She barely whispered a plaintive cry of distress before Jamal appeared at her side, tears of relief washing his perfectly smooth and sculpted features.

"_Aziza_! We thought—never mind, we didn't know _what_ to think! Are you alright? Do you know what happened?"

"Nebure?" Aziza croaked. Her whole body felt pummeled and wrung out, as though she had just spent every drop of magic in her body, and then run a marathon. Or, perhaps, it was like she had just been used as a power source for a major, earth-shifting, demon-banishing manifestation of divine powers.

"She went out to look for medicinal herbs, something about 'a concoction to call your essence back to its cipher,' whatever that's supposed to mean. Listen, _what happened_? I was afraid… I… _don't do that again_, alright?"

"West," Aziza mumbled, slipping away from consciousness, "answers are in the West." Then she was gone again, vanishing into the inky black of dreamless sleep.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"Hold it!" Zelda jumped out of her comfortable chair and slammed her hands on her desk in almost a perfect repeat of the gesture she'd used earlier on her subordinates. If she'd been a little less freaked out, she might have noticed the _deja vou_ moment. As it was, she spun around and moved a hand to each of her mirror-image duplicates and tried to grab them by the scruffs of their copy official gowns. Her hands passed through them like they were empty air, sending her tumbling off balance, at which point she tripped over her chair, flipped head-over-heels, and planted her face on the thick, soft carpeting with an embarrassing thud.

Above her, for a moment, the two clones actually did stop. They stared down at the heap of her, skirt tangled up around her hips and bestockinged legs flailing hopelessly for balance, and failed to show the smallest shred of concern. A moment later, they went back to planning their effort to 'reprogram' the servants, adding in theories about applying the same process for a mass hypnosis of the entire Hylian population.

Zelda fumbled and tumbled for half a minute to recover her modesty and rub the ache from the lump on her forehead, a process that involved completing an ungainly flip after detaching the part of her gown that had caught on her desk chair. Most people, after being shocked, embarrassed, and injured, would experience a flare of temper, possibly even an outburst. Zelda came up ice cold, eyes diamond hard and jaw set to an onerous jutting angle.

"You will cease and desist," Zelda growled, stepping around her desk to be closer to the familiar pair, unconsciously standing in place to form a perfect triangle among them. "If I am, as I suspect, experiencing some form of psychotic episode, that matter will have to be settled before my powers are used in any way."

The other two Zeldas said nothing at first, merely staring at the original like she'd sprouted a second head. They glanced at one another, then back at Zelda, until finally the one on her left gave her a patronizing smile.

"Are you honestly going to stand there and try to claim that this is anything less than exactly what you want?" This first copy possessed an arrogant bearing that Zelda recognized immediately as the one she used to intimidate courtiers. Haughty and confident, she was an image to total supremacy, a personification of royalty in its most cliché form.

"This is the most efficient course," the other copy spoke curtly, without inflection. It stood with perfect posture, too-stiff and with an expression like ice, ready to chill the sensation out of anything her gaze fell upon. "The situation calls for rapid action to diffuse an uncontrollable release of sensitive information. Even now, rumors abound from the mediocre suppression of the 'May Incident.' Another such leak to the public could result in irreparable damage to our reputation, initiating a cascading decline in all future—"

"What the stiff is getting at," the first clone cut in, tossing the second a dirty look, "Is that, well, we know what's best. We're the smartest person around. Telling these people what to think is the biggest favor anyone will ever do for them. Besides, we're their supreme autocratic leader, anyway. This will just be… 'taking out the middleman,' so to speak."

"Oh this is just charming," Zelda staggered back a step as the sheer absurdity of what she was witnessing hit her all at once. Only now did she begin to feel angry. Honestly, it was embarrassing to imagine that this was somehow a product of her own mind. "As much as it would entertain me to humor this delusional fantasy and the ham-handed attempt to represent whatever inner turmoil I may have faced recently, I honestly haven't got the patience."

"Sister, you're not getting a choice here—"

"_Don't interrupt me!_" Zelda snarled, and the haughty copy locked up, so stiff she could have been frozen in time, except her eyes, which bulged with outrage. The other copy's icy visage cracked long enough to let a flash of fear shine through.

"I'm not entirely certain what just happened to me, or how exactly it relates to what I am experiencing now. What I know with _absolute_ certainty," Zelda paused for effect, "is that I will not have my powers running wild and endangering the people of Hyrule. There will be no application of any ability I possess that is not fully reviewed by my personal conscious will. I will not tolerate hallucinations—"

"Actually, we feel that we are more akin to imagined visions based on minor fragment split personalities derived from your subconscious desires," the efficient copy interrupted, her precise nature overpowering her fear with deadly ease. Zelda waved a few fingers in a distracted motion, and now the efficient copy possessed a blank expanse of skin rather than a mouth. She started to panic in a bizarre, reserved manner, and Zelda continued.

"My mind is not a committee. I have the only vote. This nonsense ends now."

The finality of her statement was astonishing, and both copies lost the luster of personality in their eyes the next instant. A glowing line shot out from Zelda's forehead the next instant, spit into two, and perfectly pierced corresponding points on the foreheads of the two copies. Over the course of a few seconds, the two dissolved into smoke, which was sucked into the glowing line with vortex force. As they were absorbed, Zelda felt the other two cycles reassert their presence in her mind, growing from minute whispers to their full, spectacular power in mere moments. At last, she was alone in her own mind… all three of them.

With reasorbtion came an unexpected side-effect: reintegration. Zelda became aware of a sheaf of new memories, images of that very encounter from each copy's point of view, only now it was herself in their positions, up to and including the point where she'd punished each one for insubordination. It was a weird feeling to have three different perspectives on the same minutes of her life, but it assured her at last that the odd, stunted little personalities had truly been erased.

All three cycles of her mind were once again hers to command, but included in her thoughts were all the ideas that the other two 'Zeldas' had devised while separate from her. There were quite a few more than she would have been able to make the two subordinate cycles produce otherwise, so much so that it was actually a bit of a shock. However, before she could give any thought to what this might mean, or what use such copies might have in the future, should she master them, the content of those ideas drew her attention back to the hypnotized servants and guards still standing patently in their neat rows in her room. Prioritizing, she set her entire mind to the task of what to do with them.

"_Damn_!" Zelda eventually huffed, "I AM going to have to rewrite their memories! And… I'm not even sure if I know how to do that…"

Nevertheless, Zelda applied herself to the problem, and eventually succeeded, sending one dazed servant after another back to their duties or to their beds with memories of the night she'd imagined herself. It was far from an ideal coverup, not by any stretch of the imagination, and Zelda was left afterward with a hollow sense of guilt.

The original plan her imaginary clones had devised was to track down and alter everyone who'd witnessed the event, even if that meant zapping the whole city. It would not do for those who had fled the event early and those in the streets below her window to have hugely different recollections than those who stayed behind, and so she was forced to compromise with a cover story. Anyone who asked would be told she'd been dabbling with original spells, a well-known and tolerated eccentricity common to certain types of mage. Tongues would wag, but it was a serviceable lie. Only time would tell how well it held up to the rumor mill.

At length, Zelda was alone again, and she found herself brooding in her chair, staring out at the night sky through her blasted balcony doors. Her memory of what had happened just prior to this most recent escapade with the clones was limited at best. She remembered the demon and Link's dire circumstances in Careda. Her whispering stone was inert, inactive in a way it had not been since she had divided it only a few months before, indicating that its mate had been destroyed or otherwise disabled. Yet, she was certain they had been victorious. She just couldn't figure out how they'd managed it.

The servants' memories of the event had been full of her as a statue, black as obsidian, and her own recollection was a mess. She vaguely recalled meeting with Link… as well as someone else… but the rest was a blank. She pushed and prodded at the blank space in her mind, bizarre in its own way as the bulging triple-memory from her short-lived division. In a matter of minutes, she'd given the matter as much concentrated thought as six people might manage in a day, but it was a huge waste of effort, and provided no insight. Eventually, Zelda moved to massage away her migraine, only to discover that she had none.

That was when Ashei and Auru arrived with a quiet knocking at her door. With a sigh, Zelda called for their entry, already processing what to tell them and what to keep secret. There was also the matter of pumping them for more details about what they knew of the night's events, among other things. As they entered, Ashei looked stricken and Auru inscrutable. For the first time, Zelda wondered what they must have been through while she was lost to the world. She had a sudden urge to ease their weariness with an application of her charm, but caught herself. Instead, she smiled at them.

"Some night, huh?" she said. The sheer absurdity of the understatement seemed to catch them off guard. That and her smile was enough.

Ashei choked and burst into laughter, Auru putting a hand over his mouth to suppress a painfully brilliant smile. The mirth went on for a while, stress pouring out in a wash of relief, until the ministers were seated across from their monarch, and finally calmed.

"Come on," Zelda grinned at them, "there's much to discuss. Let's compare notes."

**Outside Romali's Eastern Gates, The Confederation of Careda**

"Ohh… did anyone see what hit me?" Arrika said, as she slowly regained consciousness. "Musta been a goodbye present from that amorph demon lord, to put me down like that. Eh, I'm still woozy, I feel like I'm moving through molasses."

Indeed, Arrika felt incredibly weird as she came to, like her whole body had been weighted down to the earth under her. There was a sensation everywhere that was totally foreign to her, and she could only interpret it as a sort of 'buzzing,' but without any actual sound to go with it. The only theory she could come up with, as she crawled up to a sitting position, was that the demons had found a new way to torment her kind during the long ages since their last proper battle. Her torpor could only be explained by a time-delay attack spell, because what else could make her ethereal body feel this way?

"Link? You there? I could really use another boost from that 'Golden Power' right about now. I feel like this is the first time I've moved in a million years."

Arrika was ready to spin off more snide remarks bemoaning her aches, but never got them out. Instead, she was occupied by sight of the pony-sized wolf sleeping at her feet. Though it was not an intuitive conceptual leap, Arrika still recognized Link immediately through their spiritual connection.

"Oh… you poor boy… what in the world…?" Arrika mumbled, surveying the transformation with more concern than surprise or confusion. It immediately occurred to her to dive inside of him to check out what might have caused this unreal metamorphosis. After innumerable human lifetimes as a disembodied spirit, the thought process necessary to propel her through the air and merge into a mortal body was automatic, like breathing and walking for a regular person. However, when she tried to accomplish the maneuver this time, she flopped up onto her feet, wobbled forward a bit, then face-planted without breaking her fall in the slightest.

"OWWWW!" Arrika rolled over, gripped a searing pain on her forehead, and hissed in an agonized breath. The lump on her head throbbed three times before her brain caught up with events.

"Wait a minute," she pulled her hands away from the wound, revealing eyes gone painfully wide. "_Ouch_?"

Arrika jumped up to her feet and stared down at her hands, noticing the coat of dirt they'd gained from the crater she'd been crawling in, and goggling at them like she just realized they belonged to someone else. With too-quick movements the little girl patted her body down, feeling the smooth cloth of her tight leotard and skirt, and the solid body underneath, and then she freaked out.

"EEEEEEEEKKK," she screamed like a squeamish girl who'd just found a spider in her hair, hopping up and down and waving her hands in front of her body in flailing, epileptic jerks, as though she could shake the flesh body off by sheer force and spare herself from the horror of what was happening. A minute later, when Arrika was thoroughly tired of shrieking and flailing, she collapsed, heaving for air. Then, she began to talk to herself.

"Okay… okay… get a grip girl… this can't be as bad as it seems. Powerful illusions can make it like you have a body—you've used them yourself for an eternity. Someone else must have cast this illusion! What was the checklist…?" She fretted and fussed as she thought back to her long-distant education on magic.

"Pulse!" she shouted, when the first shreds of information started returning from the mists of her indescribably long memory. She immediately held a finger to her throat, feeling the firm, regular throb just under her perfect skin. As she noticed and was unable to deny it, it sped up even further under her fingers. "DAMN! What else…?"

"Breathing, of course!" she smiled for half a moment, but then smacked a palm into her face, "Idiot! You've been breathing this whole time! But… maybe I don't _need_ to breathe?" Arrika immediately exhaled and held the air out, refusing to react to the resultant pain in her chest and head until she actually collapsed. "Okay," she croaked, when she had her breath back, "you definitely need to breathe. Blood maybe?"

Without an instant of hesitation, Arrika rolled over, stuck her filthy hand into her mouth, and bit down on the tip of her finger, hard. The pain alone should have been enough to assure her she was alive, but she didn't let go until her mouth flooded with a coppery flavor. She didn't even bother to examine the beading crimson when she let her hand fall to her side, but stared up at the pre-dawn sky in utter despondence.

"That's it. Somehow, I'm alive. And… if I'm alive, then I'm going to die." She began to cry, more proof of her vitality. "And if I die, then the power of the Mother and Father of the West will die with me, and leave the world forever. The demons will eradicate everything, and all these ages of vigilance will have been for NOTHING!"

As she proceeded to panic in a quiet fit of body-wracking sobs, the great wolf stirred nearby. It seemed unimpressed by its surroundings until it found Arrika in her grieving slump, at which point it let out a single, happy bark. Except, when this unnaturally gargantuan predatory beast expressed its joy, it was a sound not unlike the detonation of a small bomb. The sudden loud noise hit Arrika's new, organic nerve system like a bucket of ice water, and she sat up with a startled shriek. Then, the shriek died suddenly, as she jumped right out of her skin. _Literally_.

Arrika was floating four feet in the air before the lingering system shock dissipated, and she flipped around just in time to see the body she'd left melting into a puddle of smooth, viscous black tar. The wolf that had once been Link looked at her, at the puddle, and then back at her, then tilted its head to one side and made a quizzical sound. Arrika loosened up slowly as her new reality sank in, until she was standing on the air looking mildly perturbed, and more than slightly embarrassed with herself.

"Okay," she finally sighed out her acceptance, purely for show now that she was disembodied again, "so I'm still a phantom. Good. Dodged an arrow on that one." A single twitch of emotion played slowly across her features, giving the lie to her nonchalant statement. She had truly believed an eternity of servitude had been rendered moot, and not even her wizened heart could shrug off that kind of despair as quickly as she liked to pretend.

"Anyway, what do we have here?" She floated down until she hovered a mere foot above the black goop she'd only just vacated. It was moving of its own accord, mounding up into a slimy pile that quickly smoothed out until it looked like a perfect droplet of black water about the size of a championship-winning pumpkin.

"Wait a second… I know this ooze!" Arrika extended a finger downward until she was the barest of inches from touching it. The slime reached out to try and meet her halfway, but she pulled back before it could. "Amorphia. Changeling's vitriol. The stuff that dreams are made of—or at least, what nightmares use to take form in the real world. But, I don't sense any demonic energy from it." She looked over at the fuzzy giant that she knew to be her partner. "If anything, it feels like _you_. Which, I suppose, brings us back to what's going on with you. Except…" she looked back down at the amorphia, "I need to try something…"

With only an instant of hesitation, Arrika reached down to plunge her ghostly hand into the slime. Immediately, it leaped off the ground and engulfed her phantom body in a lunge almost too quick to see. Wolf Link skipped back in surprise, then started to growl softly as the muck-ball fell to earth. It began to take on a definite shape almost immediately, and after a few seconds of wet, nauseating, sucking and slurping sounds, Arrika once again knelt before him, alive as can be and wearing the skin-tight gray gown her phantom always sported. The wolf sat back down, puzzled anew, his gaze intent upon his diminutive ally, who was once again weeping.

"Oh my goddess!" Arrika gushed, wiping tears from her cheeks so she could get a better look at them, then digging her hands into the burnt soil, just to feel the roots and grime between her fingers. "This is… its so much more than I ever dared to dream… I can't…" She looked up to see Link the Wolf giving her another quizzical look, and she immediately rushed over on uncertain legs to throw her arms around his furry neck, a feat she could only accomplish by standing on bare tip-toes. "Link, you wonderful, muscle-brained, hillbilly! If those bitches you worship could suborn amorphia, they should have done it for us eons ago!"

The wolf just sat there relishing the embrace with a passionately wagging tail. After a full minute of luxuriating in the sensation of the wolf's soft, musky fur enveloping her new skin, Arrika pulled away. Fun was fun, but this transformation thing wasn't going to figure itself out, and she hobbled back one step without releasing her caressing grip on the wolf's head. The entity she knew to be Link considered Arrika with brown, animal eyes, devoid of any sort of depth, if not lacking in personality. It was chilling to note that vacancy, and Arrika felt her new pulse start to race with concern.

"Link, if you can understand me, bark twice," Arrika began, testing their circumstances with the first method that came to mind.

The wolf, evidentially enjoying her affection, barreled her over and started to lick ferociously at her face. Arrika squealed with childish delight and laughter as she was tickled for the first time in her new body. She had experienced the sensation vicariously through contractors, but not even her fully-manifested angelic form could feel anything like this, and she was quickly overwhelmed. When she finally pushed the wolf back, she was forced to lay still and recuperate, stunned by sensory overload, even as dog slobber dried on her skin, chilling her with a new, intense sensation.

"Okay… while that was great… it was also worrisome." Arrika sat up and considered the wolf again, shaking dirt out of her long, silken hair. "Link would never even consider attacking a pretty girl with his tongue. Who are you, and what have you done with him?"

The wolf, finding playtime to be over with, lifted a leg to scratch at some imagined louse on its pristine coat. Its coloration was a magnificent, almost artistic blending of gray and black on a snow-white background, the pattern mimicking a Hylian art form Arrika recognized from the dawn of time, right down to the 'third eye' loop of white on its forehead, representing the trinity theme they were ever fond of. Bored, it gave a canine yawn, exposing its terrifying fangs, and then bent over and started to lick its _very_ male self.

"Yep," Arrika flushed, resisting the urge to actively cover her eyes, "definitely not Link." After waffling for a few seconds, the newly embodied spirit gave in to circumstances. "Okay, I get it. I'm going to have to ditch this glorious ooze and go brain spelunking. Let's just get it over with already."  
As it turned out, getting on with it was a trickier prospect than Arrika had bargained for. Her every attempt to duplicate what had happened when the wolf startled her earlier was totally ineffective. She tried to concentrate on the sensation of shock, on the feeling of slipping free from her flesh, but found it to be no better than the flailing she'd done in her panic before. Eventually, she even delved into a meditative trance and tried to astral project like any average, mortal person might in an effort to travel in spiritual form. Though she had mastered the skill while alive, now, she might as well have been trying to fly by flapping her soft, skinny arms.

"Okay, this could be a problem," Arrika stood up from her meditative repose and once again considered the skin she'd wept with joy for only moments ago. "Apparently, this amorphia has absolutely no interest in releasing me, just because I want out. And if shedding it wasn't something I did… that means…" Arrika turned to the wolf, who had curled up for a bit of a nap. "Oh Gods, I'm not looking forward to being beholden to some fleabag for my liberty of astral travel. But still… a body is a body… and this body is mine…"

A few moments later, Arrika caught herself drifting off as she hugged her arms close to her torso and luxuriated in the sensation of sensation itself. She smacked herself a few times, berating herself for the distraction, and then had to concentrate to avoid becoming hypnotized by the resulting sting. When she once again had herself under control, Arrika approached the wolf again. As she drew near, its ears perked and its tail began to wag. Her biggest consolation, then, was that getting this dog to bark on demand would be about as difficult as falling off a log.

"Hey boy, I don't know what to call you, since you're not Link, but we'll work that out later," Arrika began, and the huge wolf reacted to the attention with all the restraint of a ten-pound puppy. The wolf stood up and poised on its huge paws, ready to bolt as soon as the new game it sensed began. "In the meantime, could you be a dear and make some noise for me? Somehow, that seems to be a component of deactivating this slime."

The wolf, it transpired, was at the far right extreme of the bestial intelligence bell-curve. It obviously had no ability to comprehend her words as language, but it read her intent as only a truly brilliant animal could. With a look of doggie bliss on its muzzle, the wolf began to bark with the enthusiasm canines usually reserved for message carriers and small, fuzzy creatures.

Besides its size, now the beast demonstrated another supernatural aspect. In essence, the noise it made in its assumed rage pushed outward like a palpable force that pressed upon the psyche. The thunderous clamor was terrifying in the extreme, but Arrika was braced for the fear, and managed not to quail in the face of it. The slime was not so brave, and started to melt away from the coalesced intimidation assaulting it in bursting waves.

Arrika clung to it for a moment, finding that she could force it to resist the wolf's voice, even if she could not keep it from becoming limp and discolored under the concentrated aural assault. Then she let it go, and it melted away in a flash, leaving her unencumbered, ghostly form standing where her body once had, a black puddle gathering around her ankles.

"_Okay, so we know how that works now_," Arrika floated out of the ooze and distanced herself from its tempting embrace before shushing the wolf with a placating gesture. The great creature went from murderous to mellow in the space of a heartbeat, and Arrika couldn't help but wonder. "_You know,_" Arrika observed, "_ for a guy who looks like the villain from some fairytale, you've got the manners of some prince's prize foxhound._"

The wolf seemed to understand that it was being praised, and beamed in its happiness. Below them, the slime had recovered, and set itself to retrieving what it wanted immediately. It grabbed the wolf by the paw and started to ooze up its leg, causing the wolf to start, then pick up and shake its forepaw to shed the clinging goo. It could not loosen the stuff's grip, and so it bit at the mass, only to have it sift through its teeth and mount up onto its back. From that high vantage, the amorphia sent out black pseudopods to reach for Arrika's phantom, trying desperately to fulfill its only purpose in existence.

Arrika recoiled, the allure of the amorphia much easier to resist now that she was back in her painfully familiar state of ever-life. The wolf sensed her distress and turned its head toward its back as far as it could to release a bloodthirsty growl. The amorphia shrunk away in remorse, and then sunk into the wolf's fur, altering itself to blend perfectly with its patterning until it was invisibly integrated. It knew its master, and dared not disobey.

"_Ug, pushy little bugger._" Arrika kept her distance for the time being, and finally, finally got back to the task at hand. "_Right, so, quick checklist…_" she pondered the situation for a moment, and frowned.

"_Sword,_" she said immediately, and not without a hint of regret. The object in question floated obediently from where it had been forgotten in the dirt, arriving in her hand a moment later. She twirled it idly through a spin around her insubstantial hands, drawing the wolf's interest, then stopped to gaze at the gorgeous artifact with mixed emotions warring behind her eyes.

"_Don't worry, sword,_" she eventually sighed, "_It's not as though I could forget you. We are one, now and forever._" She embraced the blade like it was her most beloved plush toy, rather than a razor-sharp wedge engineered to chop through skin, muscle, bone, and any armor that might dream to shield it all.

"_Do take care of this for me while I'm searching for Link, okay?_" Arrika tossed the sword at the wolf's back, and the amorphia caught it with surprising ease. If she needed any further evidence that it had been purged of its demonic origins, the way it encased the blade and camouflaged it into its own wolf-fur disguise was the ultimate proof.

"_Right, so, I'm packed. Where's Link's junk?_" Arrika glanced around, but could find no hint of the new armor and cumbersome weapons harness Link insisted on dragging about. Her gaze eventually returned to the wolf, which seemed to find this whole escapade endlessly enchanting. "_I hope that stuff is inside you somewhere, too,_" Arrika said, "_or Link'll throw a fit. On the bright side, this means, when I change you back, Link probably won't be naked! One less thing to worry about, right?_"

The wolf could not answer her, could not demonstrate even the remotest hint of real, human intellect, no matter how many chances she gave it, and Arrika was, at last, truly worried. She stopped to collect her thoughts one last time, then floated down to look directly into the wolf's eyes at close range.

"_I'm going to be out of touch for a while, so don't do anything Link wouldn't do, alright?_" The wolf barked, but it could have meant anything. Arrika shook her head in distress, then steeled herself for whatever she might find. "_Shall we see what's what, now?_"

With that, she phased forward, vanishing into the wolf's body. The gargantuan canine glanced about, sniffed the air, and perked its ears, trying to figure out where its friend had gone. When it could not locate her, it turned its attention to the countryside, where dawn was at last turning light upon the blighted ruins of a nightmare battle. There were familiar scents upon the wind, and it was eager to investigate.

**The Edge of a Plain, Link's Home**

Link found himself standing in front of a strange building. It was the one and only structure in all the vast grasslands, and it stood on a border between those verdant green oceans and an equally gigantic brown wasteland that stretched to the horizon beyond. The storm clouds were huge, low, and terrifying, brooding above in endless boiling masses, lit intermittently by flashes of lightning barely contained. It was just as he reached the building that the sky erupted, and with a single, deafening peal of thunder, it began to rain with torrential force.

Despite the downpour, Link couldn't help but take one last look at the building before he rushed to the door. It was a structure unlike any he had seen, heard of, or imagined. In essence, it was as if someone had dropped a pristine, milk-white glass cylinder with a rounded dome roof from the sky and planted it firmly on the grassland. It was three stories tall, or around thirty feet, anyway, and stretched at least forty feet in diameter. At last, the wind picked up, threatening to blow Link right off his feet, and he could spare no more time for what he didn't recognize, concentrating instead on the ground-floor indentation that clearly held a door of some sort.

Huddling in the almost nonexistent cover of the shallow doorstep, Link was dismayed to find that the door had no knob or latch of any kind. Lightning flashed around him in crawling towers, fencing him in with bone-shaking thunderclaps, and he cursed his luck. In a futile gesture of frustration, he slapped the door with an open palm. In a motion too fast for the eye to follow, the door sucked in three inches and whipped over to one side, pitching an unbalanced Link forward to land with a wet _crack_ on a smooth, tiled floor.

Link quickly surged back to his feet, and the moment he was out of the way, the door swished shut behind him, enveloping him in total darkness. For a moment, there was nothing but the muted sound of the violent storm, which had been reduced to such a whisper that Link could actually hear individual water drops striking the tiled floor as they ran off his body.

"Wish I had a light," Link mumbled, and took one hesitant step forward. Responding to his words, his desire, or possibly even his movement, a dozen incredibly bright lamps burst into life, flushing Link's surroundings into brilliant relief.

"Woah," was all the man could manage, when he finally started breathing again.

Besides the small space of the doorway, which was tiled and lined with racks for coats and shoes, the room was huge and uniform, unbroken by walls other than the curving outer shell of the building. Lamps were regularly placed in the shockingly low ceiling, forming concentric rings, and had no obvious flame to account for the pure light they cast. There was nothing the least bit like a stairway or ladder to a higher floor, raising the question of why the place had looked so big from outside. Other than these things, the interior was practically vacant. The only things actually occupying the vast, circular room was a small collection of furniture around a table near the door, a bed and dresser set in the distance on the left, and a strange circular stage raised in the precise center of the room.

Link shed his soaked worker's jerkin and boots onto the tiles, leaving himself damp and half-naked, but noticeably more comfortable and less likely to ruin the deep, soft carpeting. Despite the sheer surrealism of his situation, the young man could think of nothing better to do, just then, than meander over to the nearby furniture for a closer look. He had parted with the reflex to disbelief the first time his body had twisted into a lupine monstrosity, and abandoned it entirely when behemoths of every variety had crawled forth from the twilight eternity to murder him on multiple occasions. An impossible house in an unknown green paradise was fairly easy to take in stride after all that.

After examining the table and chairs and finding them unremarkable, if as oddly designed as the house itself, Link tried one of the seats. It was very low to the ground and very, very heavily cushioned, so that he sank down into it several inches and had to let his feet stretch out over the carpet in front of him. Such short chairs would have made no sense at all, except that the table was only a foot tall, leaving it just below elbow height now that he was fully reclined.

Despite himself, Link was incredibly comfortable, and the urge to catch up with his overdue hours of sleep was almost overwhelming. He glanced around again, eyes heavy, and wondered why all the chairs were arranged facing the nearest section of curving outer wall, which was just as smooth, blank, and white as it had been from outside. As his eyes wandered, they caught on something sitting on the table, just within reach, and Link grabbed it without giving it any thought. It turned out to be a miniature picture frame, and when Link idly glanced at the painting it held, he was instantly jolted from his sleepy reverie.

"Farore, Nayrue, and Din!" Link swore, almost dropping the picture frame in shock. The thing in the frame turned out to be something wholly different than a painting. The only way he could describe it was as a visual memory frozen in time. Looking at it was not unlike looking through a window into another time and place, as though at any moment the figures depicted might spring to life and walk out of the field of view. Link was so amazed by the nature of the image, in fact, that he failed to note its contents for several minutes, until it finally struck him like an angry lizardman.

"Arrika?" Link couldn't help but mutter in confusion, as he suddenly shifted his focus from the metaphorical forest to the proverbial trees. The portrait actually depicted five young women standing in a huddled group hug, and squeezed down in the middle of the mismatched bunch was a pale, lithe young minx with hip-length blond hair. It was hard to tell at first with the bright green sundress she wore instead of her severe fencing gown, but the more he stared, the more Link knew that the laughing girl in the picture was the capricious ancient who haunted his sword.

It did not take an insurmountable cognitive leap to imagine who the other four girls in the portrait might be, and Link scrambled to drink in the sight of what could only be the five Sword Maidens.

On one side stood of a giant of a girl, six-and-a-half feet tall at least, towering over her sisters by at least a foot in every circumstance. Her hair was somewhere between blue and silver, and it fell to her knees in a perfectly straight, silken mass. She was bulky and muscular where the others were all petite and soft, really setting her apart, and of them all, she was the only one wearing pants rather than a dress or skirt. Her expression was severe, turning her already aquiline features into something positively statuesque. For his life, Link could not have placed her nationality, but she somehow reminded him of Ashei.

Next in line, bent over under the tall girl's towering presence, was a gorgeous young lady with skin the color of milk-softened chocolate. She was of medium height and build for a teenage girl, and her black hair was short and unruly, tamed only by the dozens of beaded braids she'd worked into cascading curtains to frame her features on one side. Her dress was exotic blue silk, tight around the torso and flared in the skirts, without any sleeves to speak of. She was smiling with an air of smug self-confidence, so that her teeth almost glowed white in contrast to her skin. Although Link had never seen a human of such dark complexion, he'd heard tales of their magnificent cities on the coast of Tonga to the south of Hyrule.

In the center was Arrika, and to her left was a girl who sent Link into momentary confusion. Her skin and eyes were like nothing Link had even heard of: she was pale, but with a slightly yellow-orange undertone, and her eyes were almond shaped and very slightly tilted in a slant. Her hair was black as ink, pulled forward over her shoulders and allowed to drape down to her stomach, almost obscuring her odd robe. It was thick silk of some kind, closed in the front and cinched with a huge cloth belt, illustrated with breathtaking patterns of storm clouds around the shoulders and spider webs near the hem. If anything, this girl looked as sad as Arrika looked happy, but there was quiet nobility in that melancholy, and a clear resolve in the way she clung to her sisters on either side.

The last sister had the bronze skin tone of the desert people, but was otherwise nothing at all like the rough and tumble steppe-riders who traded horseflesh and exotic goods by caravan to all the world, including Hyrule. Instead, this young lady was sharp-featured, with a prominent nose and blazing orange hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her clothes were light and exposed her stomach, and her long, unruffled skirt bore a magnificent embroidered design of some sort. In the portrait, she was pulling away from the hug in futile defiance of all that affection, but she had a look of purest joy on her orange-painted lips as she did it.

"Link?" Arrika put a hand on Link's bare shoulder as he stared at the image, mesmerized. Link gave a jolt in his seat, actually dropping the portrait, turning to face his unexpected visitor with an expression of uncertain shame, as though he didn't quite know if he'd been caught in the wrong.

Link had been so absorbed, he hadn't heard her materialize on the raised dais in the center of the room, and had remained oblivious as she walked up behind him, amazement and confusion written across her face. That look remained now, solidifying as something that should have been impossible turned out to be all too true.

"Link!" Arrika had to make an effort to alter her face from a contortion of shock. "What are you doing here? How the hell did you get _here_, of all places? And… why are you half-naked?"

"Arrika?" Link, for his part, was doing his own double-take.

The sword maiden was still her remarkably slight, lithe, adolescent self, but was perfectly solid-looking to Link. He was so used to being able to see whatever happened to be on the other side of her that it took him a long moment to realize she had somehow changed clothes from her ubiquitous fencing leotard to something else entirely. He stared at her in her loose boxers and stomach-revealing tank-top for a full three seconds before it occurred to him that they were what a girl might wear _under_ her regular clothes. With admirable composure, he shifted his eyes to the disturbingly wizened glare of disbelief and suspicion she'd leveled on him and found his voice.

"How did _I_ get here?" he covered his uncertain sense of guilt with some anger of his own, "I don't even know underwear I am!"

Arrika considered that statement for a moment, then looked down at herself and huffed in annoyance. She sort of waved one hand, and suddenly she was wearing a loose green dress of the very simplest design.

"For your enlightenment," Arrika didn't even hint at a blush, far more concerned with the issue at hand, "_I_ was half-naked because it helps me to relax here in the _privacy of my own Home_!"

"Your… home?" Link was grateful for the reprieve from his hesitant embarrassment, but that statement threw him for a brand new loop. It was fortunate indeed that he was already sitting. "But… the sword…?"  
"ARGH!" Arrika drew the nearest seat away from the low table with an infuriated jerk, flopping down into it and burying her small face into equally small hands. "I'm not a talking sword!" she growled, "Throughout the eons since I lost the ability to manifest a solid body at will, I've been making do by conjoining my consciousness to contractors like you. As a result of the process, my Home is joined with yours."

Link had no answer to that, and Arrika began to glare anew.

"I'm… _missing_ something…" Link admitted, when the glare became unbearable.

"You know… Home?" Arrika said again, as though she couldn't believe he didn't know what she was talking about. Then she calmed rather suddenly, biting her lip in frustration. "Nevermind. It's usually impossible to get here without knowing what you're doing, but I should have learned by now that 'impossible' isn't the same thing when you're involved, Link."

"If it's any consolation," Link muttered, "I don't generally do it on purpose."

"Right," Arrika sighed, collecting her thoughts and reclining in the chair, which fit her small stature far better than Link's larger frame. "'Home' is a part of the Astral Plane specific to an individual person, each one unique as the person who generates it by being a live, thinking creature."

"Okay, real quick, Astral Plane?" Link replied, earnestly attempting to learn this and understand what was confounding Arrika so thoroughly.

"Nevermind that," Arrika closed her eyes to complete her stress-releasing posture, having the additional effect of relieving her from the sight of Link's damp, rippling pectoral and abdominal muscles. "Although _horrifyingly_ inaccurate, it's far easier just to think of being in this place as standing inside a sort of visual-representation of your own mind."

"Inside… my mind?" Link blinked a few times. "You mean, when you—"

"Yes." Arrika shifted slightly to glare at him through silted eyelids. "When I vanish into your body, this is where I come." She paused. Her expression creased with annoyance yet again, and perhaps the slightest hit of embarrassment. "I expected to have a chance to prepare in my Home for a trip into yours to find out why you didn't… wake up…" She studiously avoided giving up a vast sheaf of details not related to the immediate confusion. "Not the least of those preparations would have been changing into something a bit more appropriate than what I usually wear to… laze about the place. Anyway, that's where we are."

"From here, because of the interface with your Home, I can use your senses to see the material world, hear your thoughts, and access certain types of memories you possess. Frankly, anyone with enough Psion can do much the same, or even more. The Astral Plane is the realm of Psion, just as the Material Plane is the realm of Karnak—your power, Link—and the Fey Plane of is the realm of Mephisto, pure magical energy."

"Okay…" Link rubbed his temples, and then knocked lightly on the side of his skull, finding it to be thoroughly solid. "If that's the simple version, I'm glad you skipped the whole story. Now, if you need Psion or sword maiden contract power, or whatever, to get here… how am I in this place?"

"Welcome to five minutes ago, Link." Arrika slipped her hands behind her head, adjusting her long hair and then propping herself up a bit to give her associate more attention. "I can imagine you finding your way to your own Home by accident—that's not exactly impossible. People often get Home during their dreams, or while comatose—the very deepest of dream states. What I want to know is how in the world you got into MY Home!"

"Well…" Link glanced about rather sheepishly, noting that he was still ever-so-slightly damp. Only now did he seem to notice his own state of undress, but the thought fled his mind as quickly as it entered. "Frankly, I saw this as the only building on the whole vast, gorgeous landscape and I wanted to get out of the crazy-huge storm."

"Did you say storm?" Arrika was suddenly all ears, eyes gone wide.

"Yeah, it was ridiculous. I was in it for like, two minutes, and I still got drenched to the bone. That's why I'm… yeah…. Anyway, you must have heavy-duty insulation in this place, because you can't hear a thing! I mean, the walls can't be more than an inch thick!"

Arrika was ignoring him, staring into space instead, until she suddenly turned and waved her hand at the section of curving wall that the table and chairs were arrayed to face. The wall obediently became transparent, transforming into a perfectly clear, truly gigantic window.

"Ah! So that's why the chairs face the wall!" Link admired the miraculous transformation.

Arrika only had eyes for the scene now revealed—a landscape from a rainy Armageddon. Rather than the endless green expanses she had spent many a quiet afternoon admiring, Link's Home, at least on this side, was a storm-beaten wasteland of mud and eddying floodwater. Her jaw flopped open, and stayed that way for almost a minute. Link, finding the storm rather entertainingly violent now that he wasn't caught in it, admired it without breaking the room's stony silence.

"Link…" Arrika managed to force the words from dry lips, "this is… well…"

"Yeah…" Link sighed, rubbing at bare skin suddenly chilled by drying water. "It's bad. It doesn't take a Psion to guess what this is a visual-representation of, right?"

Arrika just stared. For the time being, at least, she had no words.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

As I approach closer and closer to the point where I broke for my first really long hiatus on this story, I find that I have less to say. This chapter marks the beginning of a story very different from the one that began book two, and in that sense I can understand many of the complaints I got. I sheered very suddenly from a very mundane adventure following a baddass normal to a very magical adventure following a confused, budding demigod. I should probably have just abandoned this fiction and started a new story if that was what I wanted, right? But I didn't. Oh well. At least I'm having fun, right?


	23. Ashes

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 9: Ashes**

**The Eastern Steppes**

It had been about an hour since Aziza woke from her slumber in stone, and the time since had been marked by an oppressive quiet on the pre-dawn wasteland. Jamal worked to cover for nerves, packing the camp and loading the horses, never taking eyes completely off of Aziza, fearing she might suffer another terrifying supernatural attack. It was torturous, the fear of something one could not predict or influence, especially when the consequences of the first attack were so pronounced and lasting. Swords, all the youth had to offer, could do nothing to protect Jamal's beloved, and it was torment.

Huddled by the embers of their dying campfire, Aziza shivered and sweated under a thick blanket. She was still pale, and the dark circles around her eyes were clear, as all three travelers had forgone their makeup of office since leaving their society behind. Behind her, Nebure, Aziza's perfect twin sister in all ways physical, but her opposite in personality, seemed just as distraught as Jamal. She was pressing her fingers into her sister's neck, channeling spiritual energy to calm wracked nerves and soothe the mind. In most circumstances, such a treatment would relax both the patient and the doctor, but not today. At last, Nebure settled for a hug to treat their mutual distress, and wrapped up her twin from behind until she could press their cheeks together.

"How is it?" Nebure whispered, as though even a small sound would be an affront to the silence ensconcing them all.

Without a word, Aziza slid her hand free of her blankets. Even before it was in the open, shadows danced around the confines of the blanket like it was a covered lantern, and when her palm was revealed, the cause was obvious. One triangle amid a Triforce symbol was blazing on her hand like star had embedded into her flesh.

"What does that feel like?" Nebure asked. Beyond even a medical curiosity was simple human amazement that such a thing could be happening.

"It feels like I could set the whole world on fire," Aziza replied, but her voice was distant. In the space of a few breaths, her consciousness faded, leaving her limp, her eyes wide and vacant. Nebure didn't notice until her sister's head fell forward, at which point she scrambled to support her, get a grip on her, stumble around her, and diagnose the problem. She had only halfway begun her checklist of symptoms when she noticed Aziza's open eyes, and the light therein, and lost her train of thought quite entirely.

"What is it?" Jamal arrived the next instant, dust still rising from a pile of gear now abandoned by their horses. Aziza was still sitting up, supported by Nebure's hands bracing her face. Jamal put a hand on her shoulder and wedged in close to see what Nebure was looking at. As the warrior's eyes caught on Aziza's, the trance began like a numb red light bleeding into the world out of the archmage's golden-glowing eyes.

In a discussion later, Jamal and Nebure would find that they witnessed the same disturbing vision. It was heat, and force, and magic, and it was the biting cold, and resilience, and the void. It was the mailed fist that shatters the foe, the sharpened sickle that topples the tyrant, and the plated boot that crushes the meek. It was all of these things, but mostly, it was a giant. The giant was a deep, throbbing red, and stood on an endless plane of softer scarlets and pinks. It was a scene without reference, so that its size varied in the mind's eye from merely tall, to mountainous, to planetary. Only a sense of enormity was constant—that, and a gentle tinge of femininity in the figure's indistinct outline.

In one hand, the giant held a staff-wand, the classic symbol of wizardry, and in the other it held a thousand struggling men and women. The people squirmed and writhed, resisting the giant's grip, and then suddenly they were all one man, huge, but still doll-like in the giant's fist. Black magic poured from the man's flesh as he lashed at the giant, trying in futility to chain it, but it was as if he tried to shift the continent he stood on by dragging at a length of rope tied to the ground. In moments, the giant crushed him it its grip, and then the man was a thousand tiny individuals once more.

Aziza was in the vision then, her tanned figure naked and perfect, kneeling on a platform that hovered at the giant's chest height. The giant held out both hands, offering the wand and the fist of struggling captives, and Aziza responded with an identical gesture of acceptance. As the giant's hands approached, the struggling ones became that great, dark, furious man again, but this time he reached for Aziza. Wisps of golden light were raining from the wand, seeking Aziza to enwrap her in their glow, but the man's black magic clawed at each wisp in turn, dragging them back. His progress was slow, the wisps flowing from his magical bonds like water between clenched fingers, but his tenacity was such that he actually prevented the power from reaching Aziza, despite its obvious intent. That, and without the golden energy, Aziza herself had no defense from the boiling black-violet tendrils that emerged from the man's body and poised for the attack.

"NO!" Jamal and Nebure had the thought at the same instant, and in that instant, they were no longer mere observers in this struggle. Nebure was a blue silhouette, the transparent outline of a crown on her head as she placed a hand on Aziza's right shoulder. Jamal was a green silhouette, poised with a phantom sword at Aziza's left shoulder. In the face of the three, the man raged and gnashed his teeth, his orange hair flashed like fire, and he bellowed his defiance. And then the giant's fist clenched, and he was a thousand tiny strugglers again.

In an instant, the gold wisps found Aziza, and in such light, the phantoms of possibility that were Jamal and Nebure were washed away. The crown and sword that might have been evaporated, having failed the test of reality after succeeding in the test of potential. Still, the golden power did not let their potential languish, and as Aziza filled with light, the silhouettes at her left and right were also energized. And then, the vision was over.

Back in reality, Aziza woke with a jerk, finding herself, for a moment, to be feeling far better than she had in weeks. The glow in her hand was still intense, but her mind no longer clouded with fevered, indistinct terrors, and she seemed herself again after endless, low-key misery. She had gained half a smile before she saw what lay before her.

"Jamal? Sister?" Aziza stood above the two most important people in her world as they shuddered and jerked on the ground, seizing in the grip of energetic ecstasy. Her heart was trying its hardest to freeze to a dead stop as she watched, but before she could really begin to panic, the situation changed.

Nebure was the first to stop her seizure, stiffening sharply and then laying calm on the dusty rocks. The right side of her face was dominated by a glowing golden tattoo, a circle inscribing two teardrops that slanted in complementing spirals. If the teardrops had touched they would have formed a perfect circle not unlike what the easterners called Yin-Yang, but they stood apart instead, like two flames chasing each other's tails. Nebure moaned in relief and fell silent, and Aziza was forced to turn her attention on Jamal, who never stopped shaking.

"Jamal, wake up! What's wrong?" Aziza fell upon her lover and touched her hands to Jamal's face and chest. It was only when the glow of her left hand was over Jamal's heart that the reaction occurred.

Before Aziza even knew what was happening, the stored glow in her palm and all the associated power in her body rushed out of her all at once, the sensation exhausting her beyond endurance, leaving her to collapse onto Jamal. The power rushed out, thrust into the skin of her lover, and did what it had longed to do, what it was meant to do, performing one of the greatest feats of the Triforce of Power.

At first there was just the two beautiful young people in a barely-conscious embrace. Then, for just a moment, Jamal's body flashed with all the light that had once been contained in Aziza's hand. It was barely a moment, but Jamal was awake and aware the next instant, and sat up to cradle Aziza in strong arms. There was a look on Jamal's pretty, soft face—eyes wide, lips drawn thin, breath short—that defied the lack of any visible changes from the reaction.

The young warrior did not speak, but gathered Aziza and Nebure into either arm as mirror-images of frailty, holding both protectively until the sun peaked over the jagged steppe horizon.

**Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

The morning after the nightmare that leveled Romali began with eerie quiet. Hours after the flesh-rending shadows had departed, hours after the directionless mind-shattering terror had abated, hours after the world-shaking throb of supernatural light and skin-tingling energy vanished from outside the walls, the people were still gripped by the unreal horror that permeated every aspect of the event. As the sun rose, shuffling crowds of shell-shocked survivors looked upon the destruction and could not comprehend its sheer magnitude. Those that had taken to the streets the night before were almost universally numbed to uselessness by the experience, and that didn't change simply because they now saw the wreckage of the nightmare in the clear light of day. If anything, the light dispelled the last lingering illusion that the night had been a bad dream, the destruction became real, and a great many men and women simply could not handle that reality.

Simultaneously, almost as though they spoke with the same breath, a horrible sobbing, crying, and wailing rose from the streets of Romali. Some of the witnesses, who had gripped sanity only by bloodied fingernails, now began to howl and gibber, or worse still, to laugh out their despair as their minds severed ties with reality in protest of what they'd seen. Others became despondent, weeping and moaning their hearts out, searching for catharsis from the brutal stress they had absorbed and survived. These two groups were useless and mostly harmless, but a third group of hardier souls did escape that night with faculties intact, and they joined those who had successfully hidden through the night and those who were only now arriving from other places to topple the city into new chaos.

Romali before disaster had been home to a huge criminal class as well as a gigantic population of desperately poor laborers. Concentrated disproportionately in the dock districts that had become a charnel pit, and lacking the sturdy homes that repelled fire and demons alike, this group had suffered by far the most casualties during the bloody hours of the night, but were so numerous that they still outnumbered the middle and upper classes. A scant few in this category had families to protect, or strong ties to an employer they might rally around for some constructive purpose. Most, however, were bitter, illiterate, unattached young men who spent all that they earned by day on beer and prostitutes in the following night, and whose only community ties were the gangs they formed because the mafia wouldn't admit them. These, then, were the ones who began the looting, and the rape, and the wholesale murder of anyone who protested the first two activities. With the city watch mostly dead or insane from the battle, there was nothing to stop them.

Romali's middle class, unless they had been caught in the open when the attack struck after dark, had suffered miraculously little during the demonic rampage. When the terror suffused the city, they barred sturdy doors and windows hid with their children in barricaded safety. The fires had been mostly restricted to the commercial districts, where people had cause to be out after dark, and much of the middle-residential zone was completely unscathed. As though to compensate for this fortune, it was here that the gangs struck first to slake their rapacious thirsts, and the unmarred cobblestones of many a fine neighborhood was running red with fresh blood before the young dawn fully spilled over the city's walls.

As word spread through these closely-knit boroughs of men murdered in their own homes, of women raped and dragged naked into the streets to be raped again, and of children either orphaned, or subjected to their parents' fates without regard to their innocence, panic blossomed uncontrollably. Whole families, burdened by what little they could carry, flooded streets already choked by debris, the dead, and the maddened survivors of the battle against the demons. In the streets, they became trapped by falling buildings, were harassed by the mad, ran afoul of gangs, or lost their heads and joined the looting, if not the rape.

In short, it was a riotous upheaval of massive proportions. And yet, though its cause was unique and its scale unheard of, it was not Romali's first riot, and the wealthy citizens of Romali were prepared. The most exclusive communities in Careda's wealthiest city were all walled and gated like independent fortresses. These islands of decadent luxury were guarded by the retainers of the merchant-kings and lesser nobility, men and women with personal loyalty encouraged by generations of service and beefy fringe benefits. Any looters, or innocent bystanders, who came anywhere near these palatial targets were shot dead by marksmen. For the super-wealthy, the riot was little more than a nuisance, something to provide background noise to lively speculation about what had caused last night's fracas and how best to reap huge profits from the aftermath of the massacre and destruction.

And so, while the rich resided in safety, suffering no more than the barest undercurrent of anxiety, the rest of the city bled with violence or raved in madness, the tally of victims rising not because a hell-spawned fiend hated their existence, but because the intense pressures of an unjust human society had found a way to vent after years of buildup. This was the scene that greeted Arrika when she emerged in spectral form from Link's Home, and when she recognized where she was and what was happening, the sheer irony of it was almost enough to drive her back to that idyllic place. For the people here to do anything but embrace the reprieve from annihilation that had come at so high a price was among the sadder things she'd seen in her many lifetimes of experience.

Watching humanity destroy itself had become something of a morbid pastime of Arrika's over the millennia, and not for the first time, she was overcome by fatigue, wondering how she could justify the eternity she'd spent defending mankind when this was all the respect they had for each other's lives. And then, she turned to see what Link's canine alter-ego was doing, looking for a clue as to why they were in the city in the first place, and her mood bounced right back again.

The gigantic wolf was currently halfway through the process of scattering a gang of crazed killers that had set up in the middle of a ruined residential neighborhood to revel in the plunder of their looting spree. It was not difficult to imagine what had caught the wolf's attention, because a dozen women between the ages of fifteen and fifty were cowering to one side, pulling in vain at the ropes that bound them to a half-toppled street lamp, so terrified of the beast that was rescuing them that they wrenched anew at bonds which had already bloodied their wrists from earlier thrashing.

If Arrika had been using the amorph to simulate a body, her blood would have heated in fury to see these women. To the last, they were battered about the face, their features swollen and shining. Their clothes had been torn away, leaving scant rags, and Arrika could see purple-black bruises tracked down their mostly-exposed bodies. The bruises were vicious and random, but concentrated on breasts, shoulders, thighs, and stomachs, all places where large male hands had clenched or strong male fists had landed in anger or sadistic spite.

In their terror, the victimized women all had empty, animal eyes, eyes that sought nothing but an end to pain and torment, some escape from the miserable reality of the blood and grosser things left behind on their thighs by the callous violations they'd endured again and again. Yes, if Arrika had owned any blood at that moment, it would have boiled. Instead she had to settle for cold, intellectual fury, and for the instant justice taking place before her eyes.

The women shrieked anew as Wolf Link bit one gangbanger on the arm, rending flesh and shattering bone until white shards stabbed up through the muscles. The man bellowed his agony to the skies, stumbling away in shock as he watched his arm slump at an odd angle, and then fainting dead away from the pain. Wolf Link never stopped moving, but bounded upon another foe, bashing him to the ground with a tackle-rush and then biting him on the shoulder, breaking bones and leaving dozens of shallow stab wounds from his long fangs. With the bastard's torso still gripped in his teeth, Wolf Link shook his head, physically launching the man up onto a nearby rooftop, which he subsequently slid off of and plummeted to the stone streets to land in a rubbish heap.

Descending on his dwindling supply of targets, Wolf Link bit a leg, shattering it in two places and nearly tearing it off, and then turned and barked at another man with supernatural intensity, battering him off his feet with an invisible blast of force and slamming him into a wall. The wall rattled with the impact, and Wolf Link's ear-splitting barking continued until the branch-snapping noise of breaking ribs answered to his efforts, and the man was allowed to tumble to the ground, bleeding from his ears.

These men joined another four that were already screaming over maimed limbs or cracked skulls, and another six were disappearing down various alleys and cross-streets, bare asses borne to the world. Apparently, the ones who hadn't stopped to pull up their trousers were the ones who had gotten a good head start on Wolf Link. It was not enough, however, and Arrika watched with vindictive delight as the magnificent beast hunted down each man in turn, leaping onto buildings and back to the ground with reckless ease to cut them off, seeming to have no trouble at all with finding the culprits.

Wolf Link returned when its mission was done, licking its bloody muzzle in satisfaction at the horror of violence it had wrought. Now it had a new task in mind, and approached the women still tied helplessly to the lamppost like goats tethered in a stockyard. Terrorized beyond reason, the gaggle of rape victims pulled at their ropes until their chaffed-bleeding wrists grew new scars, their wails reaching a simultaneous peak of piteous despair as the wolf closed on them. Arrika saw the problem, and flashed to action.

"_SIT_!" Arrika snapped, after zipping through space to appear in front of the beast. The wolf, surprised and delighted to see her, skidded to a stop on the cobblestones and obeyed instantly. "_Who's a good boy_?" Arrika caressed the wolf about the ears with a phantom hand, then jerked the hand away when the amorph hiding on the wolf's back made a grab for it. The wolf loved the attention; its tongue, which was actually bigger than Arrika's petite hand—and was currently coated in gore—lolled out in a pant of canine delight.

"_Link will be happy to know that you're keeping up his good reputation,_" Arrika told the beast, hoping that this was universally true. So far, the creature Link's body had become was not murdering people and retained an apparent sense of justice. In this situation, 'maiming wounds that would probably fester and become fatal' could probably be overlooked, even considering Link's bizarre, if commendable, hesitance to slay other humans.

Speaking of the Hero made Arrika think of how she'd left him behind in her Home. They'd had a long discussion about what had probably happened to him, and how it had probably been caused by the overload of power he'd survived the night before. Of course, she didn't know why his body had become a wolf instead of just leaving him comatose from brain damage, and though Link had seemed to have some clue, he'd refused to talk about it at the time. They'd gotten to discussing what it was like to live life as a disembodied spirit, permanently phased out onto the Astral Plane, and that had led to a discussion of the Psion discipline of spirit-travel, which would let anyone move through the world as Arrika did.

Arrika had suggested Link learn it, that it might give him a way to escape the prison of his own Home while he suffered his bizarre mind injury, and had even begun to teach him for a while. At least, she tried to teach him. It came about that Link had no talent for it at all, and they'd gotten nowhere. In despair, Arrika had reminded him that a Home was not such a bad place to be, and had showed him how she tapped into all of his real-world senses while she rode within his mind. Casting his vision up onto the wall of her home had show them a wolf's-eye view of a city in turmoil, and reality came crashing into their comfortable illusion. She'd left him behind to go out and survey the disaster first-hand, and he had let her go, totally focused on what he should have been experiencing directly.

"_I'm not really sure how we're going to get Link back in control of that lump of flesh,_" Arrika admitted to the dog, confident that the thoughts did not reach the depth of a Home where Link resided. "_I'll have to teach him trans-astral possession, probably. The gods only know how long _that_ will take. But… one thing is for certain._" Arrika smiled, wondering if Link was still looking out of the wolf's eyes. _"If he learns to project, and wants to use the amorph for a body, he'll have to brain-wrestle me for it, and I'm pretty sure I can take him in that arena._"

The wolf clicked its jaw shut and looked around Arrika's transparent phantom to draw her attention to the trapped women. They were unsure of their reprieve as the wolf hesitated some distance away, and were screaming prayers and curses, or just screaming. Despite the soul-crushing number of times Arrika had known such victims in her history, every new instance still broke her wizened heart. For the first time in her long existence, there was a way she could go to them and comfort them in person, and she found the urge to try it overwhelming. Something told her it was a bad idea, that she'd never spoken to anyone but martially-hardened warriors in an age without reckoning, and that being encased by flesh was no place to be when flesh-abusers were in such abundant supply. She ignored that voice.

"_I'll handle them_," Arrika assured the concerned wolf. "_They'll hurt themselves in their terror if you get any closer. Let's try that alley over there for some privacy_."

The wolf obeyed, and moments later they were in a narrow space between two houses, and the wolf's fit was so tight that his shoulders touched both walls. The screams were still fading behind them when Arrika reached out to the amorph on the wolf's back, and the creature leaped toward her, excited to fulfill its small purpose for existing. Moments later, Arrika was again a creature of flesh, and she was immediately assaulted by the smell of burning buildings and battlefield gore. Just as she was getting used to it, there was a scream in the distance ahead of them in the street opposite where they'd come from, and before Arrika could react in her fleshy shell, Wolf Link had already jumped up to the rooftops above them in a series of acrobatic wall-hops and vanished into the city.

"Oh right, leave the beautiful, underdressed girl alone in the riot of the century," Arrika said, only too late remembering that there was no one listening now that her words only traveled as far as her small voice could carry them. Arrika huffed and wrote off the adventurous beast, then managed to get one step before the world caught up with her. For a moment, then, the women she'd wanted to help so badly were a background thought, because the sensations assailing her were too much to ignore.

Arrika felt a chill through her bare feet on the cobblestones, and the alley's damp air seemed to pass straight through the thin, skin-tight fencing leotard and skirt she wore. The flash of cold up her body and her hair trying to stand on end were an almost overwhelming sensory experience, matched only by a sudden awareness that she was shivering.

"This thing is really far more practical when you don't have to worry about goosebumps…" a slight breeze set her teeth to chattering, and she added, "or freezing to death! Amorph, can't you change into _anything_? Help me out here!"

The amorph, which had no imagination or capacity for memory whatsoever, interpreted her command and changed its outermost layer to the only other configuration it had a pattern for. A moment later, Arrika was standing in the alley completely naked.

"Not an improvement!" Arrika tried not to grind her teeth. Nudity was not the kind of thing that would embarrass her after a lifespan like hers, but the gentle breeze now cut twice as chill. "Change back!"

Once again wearing her eternal raiment, Arrika gritted her teeth and shut out the cold. Her sensation-suppression efforts seemed to reduce all of the input assaulting her, and she was left much more capable of focus. Satisfied for the moment, she bent down to pick up her sword from where the amorph dropped it, only to discover yet another problem.

"Crap! It's heavy!" Arrika mumbled, finding that she had to lever the blade against the ground just to get the hilt up in the air. It did not have the supernatural weight of the curse that prevented all but Link and her from wielding it, but apparently, for the amorph's hands, it did not have the magical blessing that made the ultra dense metal light as a feather, either. "What the hell! I could swing it around like a toothpick when I weighed nothing, but now that I'm ninety pounds it won't budge!"

Of course, this wasn't exactly the case, and as she compensated for the fact that it had weight, period (something she wasn't at all used to) she found that it moved with only a moderately strenuous effort. Of course, it was still much heaver than a blade of steel, and being able to pick it up and prop it over her shoulder was not the same thing as being able to swing it with enough force to cleave apart meat, bone, and armor. Feeling its weight pinch her skin, Arrika was suddenly much less enthusiastic about this whole 'being corporeal' experiment. If it weren't for the fact that she could feel her magic throbbing strongly within the hilt gemstones, Arrika might have waited for Wolf Link to come back within reassuring earshot before going to aid the riot's victims. Instead, carefully picking her way over the alley's sharp rubble and trash on bare tiptoes, Arrika ventured into the early morning sunlight.

The beat of the sun warmed her, reminding her that it was still late summer despite the cold stone of the city, and she took a moment to appreciate the first sunshine on her skin since the day she'd been sacrificed to her life's endeavor. The women, only now settling into a mix of relief and despair now that the wolf was gone, took a long moment before noticing her. When they did, they all began to call out simultaneously, and although her Caredan was rusty, Arrika could tell that half of them were begging for help and the other half were telling her to run and save herself.

Arrika advanced cautiously, watching her step to avoid the maimed, unconscious bodies Wolf Link had left, and anything that might hurt her tender feet. She also kept her eyes peeled for new groups of looters that might stumble onto this scene and decide to claim what the last group had left piled in the middle of the street… or tied to the lamp post. When she finally was standing next to the women, they had mostly calmed down, and were staring at her as though they could hardly dare to hope that she was there to rescue them.

"Back up," Arrika said, brandishing her sword with some difficulty. Using both hands, she was able to prepare and aim a perfect slice at the lamp post, cutting through all twelve rope moorings in a single stroke and leaving a deep score on the thick wood.

Suddenly reprieved from what had promised to be a miserable few days punctuated by death, the women fell about and wept in relief, or crowded around Arrika to thank her with hugs. About five of the women immediately turned around and dashed into nearby half-looted houses, hands still tied and severed bonds trailing behind them. The rest were either paralyzed with fear or shocked into mental numbness, and glanced around with eyes that did not see, as badly traumatized as those who had participated in the battle against the demons.

"Thank you, little one," the last coherent victim said, getting Arrika's attention. She was about twenty five, with the traditional black hair and dark Caredan complexion, and her naked body had a particularly cruel track of bruises and human bite-marks. "But, what are you doing out here? Where is your family? There are far more men like these," she spat at a fellow who tried to crawl away, dragging a horribly broken leg behind him, "and you could easily share our fate." She choked up for a moment, swallowing more tears, "I don't even know how we will avoid being recaptured by others!"

"Please," Arrika put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her back from the brink of a despairing catatonia, "Please," she said again, addressing all the women now, "I know you've faced an ordeal, but you must value your lives. For all that's been stolen from you, or inflicted upon you, you are still alive. If you simply—"

"What do you know, child?" Shrieked a wild-eyed woman of twenty, who wore a bleeding knife-would from her nose to her shoulder. "My family is murdered, how will I survive? What if I carry a bastard? No honest man will have me with this face! Any moment, more dock scum will come to drag us away for their pleasures, and then gut us when we cease to wiggle for their amusement! Don't think they'll spare your lilly-white flesh, just because you don't bleed out your monthly cycles yet!"

The first woman stepped forward before Arrika finished sputtering her outrage, slapping the cut woman into silence with one sharp blow.

"The girl is right! We have a chance now that we didn't before, when those brutes came bursting into our homes without warning. We can hide, barricade ourselves somewhere until the Don quells the riot!"

"And how long will that take?" the maddened woman wept, crumpled on the ground, "how many more men will find us and break down our barricades in the meantime? It is hopeless. This is the end of the world."

The woman's despair seemed infectious, and the empty-eyed victims around her slumped and found fresh energy to spend on hopeless weeping. Sensing the moment slipping away, the brave woman set her jaw and scowled.

"You're a fool." Her expression was somewhere between tears and disgust as she drew back everyone's attention with nothing more than the force in her tone. "Life goes on. Spending an hour getting slapped around and 'entertaining' a strange man from her back is far from the worst thing a woman's had to do to survive a nightmare like this. But we are women, and we are alive because of it, and we can't just throw that away!"

"Stupid slut," the despairing woman muttered, "your words mark you as a whore. Better dead than a harlot, better dead than mother of a bastard." Her eyes went deathly cold and empty. "And now, we're as good as dead, without a prayer for marriage or any work outside a brothel. If the child wanted to save us, she should have used that blade on our throats!"

"Fine, stay here and die, for all I care!" the brave woman shouted, "Our families, our futures, both may have been stolen away, but in life there is a chance to see our families avenged, to reject this ghastly 'fate' and take our futures back! _I'm _not going to give up and wait for death, not after Dio sent this girl to give us another chance!" After everything, this was what roused the women, who stared at the brave lady with bruised and tear-swollen eyes suddenly sparked with life again. Seizing on what had caught that spark, the woman pressed on. "This opportunity is a miracle! To waste it would be to spit in Dio's eye after he answered our prayers!"

'Albeit a bit late,' was what Arrika wanted to say, but didn't dare to interrupt the dynamic play between hope and despair. She was on the hopeful woman's side, and if it took empty religious rhetoric to get these women someplace safer than this open street, then so be it. And, as a matter of fact, it did work, and the women drew themselves up one by one, until even the despairing woman crawled to her feet. Apparently, driving them all to destruction was an acceptable end, but to die _alone_ in a pit of despair was not so attractive.

"If you're with me, then come on, we have to hurry!" The de-facto leader of these ravaged ladies was obvious now, and Arrika didn't fight it as the brave woman took charge. "Men I can deal with, but that _beast_—it was like a nightmare come to life! We need to find cover before it comes back!"

"The beast?" Arrika smirked, finally finding a place for herself in all this. Before she realized it, her feeble attempt to rally the broken victims had been overcome by this surprise heroine's far more impressive effort. Stung, relegated to a mere supporting role, Arrika found herself boasting, never for a moment considering that this might not be the best method for calming her traumatized audience. "Oh, you must mean my big boy, Ziggurat." Her audience's eyes all bulged for a moment, and then the brave woman shook her head.

"I'm not talking about some dog, I'm referring to that monster wolf that shredded these men like so many chickens! It… it went off the way you came from… did you not see it?"

"Yes, yes, that was Ziggurat, my Hylian Ghostwolf." Arrika busied herself by gathering up the other girls with gentle touches, cutting their hands free of the ropes handcuffing them, and searching for a good house to hole them up in. "He's about yea high," Arrika lifted a hand a ways above her own five feet, two-inches of height, "and makes a sound like a bomb going off. I recognize his handiwork here, so it must have been him. He reacts poorly to women-abusers, as you've learned. He and I are out searching for my family," Arrika lied easily, "and we can't stop here, so you all need to find a good hiding place."

"I… I can't believe such a creature could be tamed by man…" the brave woman admitted, but stopped talking and helped Arrika herd the other victims toward a house with an undamaged door. Somehow, Arrika's words and carefree tone seemed to calm her charges… or at least, didn't aggravate their hysteria. Doubtless, they would later be sent into screaming terrors or the blackest pits of depression by memories of this day, but for the moment they were motivated only by survival instincts, and soldiered on.

They were most of the way to Arrika's chosen hideout when a sudden sound of pounding footsteps prompted Arrika to spin around and heft her sword. At least, she tried to. Being weighed down with flesh ruined her reaction time, and she was only halfway turned when a huge, dirty, stinking arm wrapped around her waist and arms, pinning her tightly and plucking her effortlessly off the ground. Her sword skittered to one side on its point and clattered to the street, and the women shrieked and stampeded into the house. All of them, that is, except for the brave one who'd spoken with Arrika, who backed up against the house and crumpled, too terrified to run away properly.

"What happened out here?" bellowed the big thug who'd ambushed them, ignoring Arrika's struggles effortlessly as he surveyed the carnage left by Wolf Link. The man was fairly hefty, disgustingly hairy, covered in scars, and possessed a face so pinched and pockmarked that he seemed more monster than human. He was still damp and scented with perfumes, as though just out of a bath in one of the looted houses, so it was little wonder that Wolf Link had missed him. In one arm he held Arrika, shrugging off her kicks, and in the other arm he held a tiny, naked, vacant-eyed girl that might have been fifteen years old, but, sadly, was probably a bit younger than even that unspeakable immaturity. The girl hung limp as blood and tears dripped from her slack face, and she, too was still damp from bathwater, telling the tale of her treatment far better than any words could have. "Boys, who did this to you? Who destroyed my gang?"

"It was me, you son of a whore!" Arrika shouted, trying to get his attention, and, more importantly, trying to get him to shift his grip. She was hopelessly pinned in her current position; with no leverage, her slight body would sooner budge a mountain than this man's biceps. Her sword pulsed with magic on the ground, ready to spit invisible death at her command, but the sight of the child he had already destroyed filled Arrika with a fresh rage. She did have a body now, and her imitation heart quickened with adrenaline as her vision clouded with a red fog that demanded a more personal punishment.

"What's that, meat?" the man dropped his used-up 'bath toy' as he wrapped one paw around Arrika's throat and lifted her up to dangle by her neck from his fist.

"I said," Arrika croaked past the pressure on her throat, "I broke these filthy mongrels. Then, I suggested it would be safer for what's left of their health to pay your mother for sex. Now I would like to continue by pointing out that, just because your manhood is so tiny that it is difficult to locate, doesn't give you the right to inflict the ordeal of tracking it down on childr-_GLK_"

The man's fist suddenly tightened, crushing Arrika's throat. She was not really alive, and couldn't actually die from suffocation, but the amorph was faithfully sending her all the sensations associated with the experience, and it was an indescribable agony. As he strangled her toward unconsciousness, the gang leader spoke in a low, vicious rant, describing in minute detail all the horrifying ways in which he intended to violate her.

The talk would have been bad enough by itself, although Arrika could hardly hear through the pulse pounding in her ears. Still, the real problem came when he emphasized the threats by groping her underdeveloped chest in an extraordinarily painful manner. For a brief moment, Arrika considered simply gutting the man with a wave of power from the sword, but then he drew her much closer to watch her suffer, and she managed a smile for his fatal mistake.

With the shortened distance to his chest, Arrika managed to plant one foot on his brestbone, and then used that as leverage to thrust her heel up at his face, crushing his nose. Warm blood spread over her leg and a sympathetic pain stabbed from her bare heel, but the man was staggered by the crushing blow and loosened his grip as pain flushed his nervous system. Next Arrika wrapped her knees around his bicep, arched her body, and levered her neck out of his numb fingers. Before he could shake her off, she planted one knee against the back his elbow, hooked her other heel into his shoulder, and grabbed his huge hand with both of hers, then arched all of her muscles in tandem until his elbow dislocated with a gut-churning popping noise and his joint bent around the wrong way.

The man was shrieking in pain now, and fell to his knees. His own destroyed elbow was the last thing he saw before Arrika jumped up onto his shoulders from behind, mounted his head between her knees, placed her palms over his face, and stabbed each of his eyes with her middle fingers. A moment of pressure and a flick of the wrists, and she jerked his eyes out of his skull, leaving them to dangle on bloody optical nerves, half-crushed a few inches out of either socket.

Screaming in a constant, repeating stream of curses and pleading whimpers, the thug cradled first his arm, then his face, crawling on his knees to get away. While he stumbled blindly along, Arrika retrieved her sword, hefting it up and in one hand and balancing it over her other forearm with the point aimed directly at the man's crotch.

"Gods, I hope that hurts!" Arrika spat, grimacing at the ongoing pain from her neck and chest. "Somehow, I doubt it's half as much hurt as you've dealt out to others today. Still, consider _that_ your reward for reminding me of pain, and how very much it _hurts_." Arrika sent a tiny finger of her power through the blade, launching an invisible beam out of the tip. "_This_ is for what you did to these women and that girl!" The beam zipped through the thug's pants without disturbing the cloth, but lacerated his genitals into useless, bloody ruin while carefully avoiding any major arteries so that he would survive the experience. His pants stained red, he shrieked in a high pitch, he vomited, and then he finally collapsed unconscious.

When the man was still, the street fell into an eerie silence, disturbed only by the distant sound of the ongoing riot and Arrika's labored breathing. In an almost surreal follow-up, the damaged girl the man had brought with him gathered herself from her crumpled desolation and screamed a berserker's war cry before beating on the man with tiny fists. Arrika stopped her only long enough to arm her with a cobblestone, then let her work her horror out on her tormentor's ribcage.

"You should have just killed him," a voice interrupted the bizarre scene, and Arrika turned to find the gutsy woman who'd spoken to her before, now draped with a looted carpet. It took a moment for Arrika to recognize the source of her vehemence on the point.

"Ah… so he… to you… _right_." Arrika hesitated, considering how to answer that and finding no tactful course. Instead, she looked around until she saw something sharp, and toed a shard of broken glass on the street, sending it skipping toward the woman. "If that's the way you feel it should be, then go ahead. I'm neither the jury to decide guilt, nor the judge to pass sentence. I'm not going to kill these men, even though I personally feel they deserve it."

"But you just—and your wolf—they should _die_ for what they did to me! For what they did to my family! They don't deserve a drop of mercy!"

"We were attacked," Arrika made sure to include herself among the victims, "and we acted to defend ourselves. They're not attacking anyone now. In fact, they're harmless, and probably dying in most cases. Not only would killing them now be murder, but it would also be merciful."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing! Do you understand what that man intended to do to you? What he _already_ did to _me_? I cannot comprehend that you would shrink from the killing they've earned after these maimings you do not even blink your eyes to witness!"

"I did what was necessary to defend myself," Arrika said calmly, "and I approve of what Ziggauraut did to protect all of you. None of these men will be getting up again to harm another today, and that is exactly how it should be. This is a riot, there's no time to take prisoners, and no chance to keep them. Merely chasing them away would invite your neighborhood's fate on some other place. They weren't dangerous enough for death to be the only sure way of stopping them. Also, I say again that their suffering is apt punishment for their crimes. If they die of festering wounds, it will be because they didn't believe anyone would rise to defend the weak, not because I felt I knew who deserves life and who has earned death."

"You use petty distinctions to salve your conscience," the woman nearly hissed, but made no further accusations.

"Whatever. I say justice, you say mercy. You say revenge, I say murder. Alive or dead, these men should serve as a fair warning to whoever tries to loot this area next. I'm not saying you'll be safe here, but it might help. Hopefully, things will calm down in a day or two, the Don will declare martial law, or something, and you can all search for your families."

"I won't be finding mine," she answered, eyes gone empty. She reached down to lift the glass shard Arrika had offered her, and examine its jagged, sharp edge. "Almost none of these girls will have their families back, all thanks to these monsters. In that sense… maybe death _is_ too good for them… perhaps they should live on… 'separated' from certain body parts."

Arrika saw the mad rage in the woman's bearing and knew that her assailant wouldn't be the last eunuch made today. She carefully avoided giving any approving or disapproving signals as she looked at the moaning crowd of crippled men littering the streets. Over the centuries, her sense of justice had grown a great deal of room for the shades of gray, and she could not bring herself to feel any urge to defend these men. Besides—even if she could claim that it was in the heat of combat to ensure the opponent didn't come back for more, she had done no less in the full flush of her anger than what this woman now proposed in cold blood.

"Their fates are in your hands now." Arrika said, after a long moment. "I won't blame you for whatever you do, and I doubt Lin—I mean, Ziggurat would stop you either." As though summoned by the name she'd made up for him, Wolf Link howled from a street or two over, getting closer. "I have to go. Just try to remember that they've already been punished for their crimes, and that murdering them would be a mercy compared to the suffering their wounds will bring them."

"I don't know who, or what, you are, little sister," the woman replied, the anger never leaving her eyes, "but I owe you too much to question you now. Good luck finding your family, and my thanks to you and your beast," the woman squeezed Arrika's shoulder, and her hand was shaking. Evidently, her courage was barely concealing the shock of the terrors she'd endured so far. "I'll try to take care of these women. I just wish I knew what was going to happen next."

"Next you're going to…" Arrika barely stopped herself from saying 'pray to Dio for no babies,' "…collect supplies and barricade a house. Ziggy and I will drive any other looters away from this place on our way through the city. I may even direct other refugees here, so be prepared for somewhat more pleasant company."

Wolf Link appeared the next moment, leaping from a rooftop to the street so gracefully, it seemed as though he should have been born with wings. Arrika left the woman behind to contemplate the cruelty of her wicked glass blade and met with the wolf in a nearby alley. As soon as they were alone, she was greeted by a growl of concern for the blackening bruise around her neck.

"Oh, don't worry," she calmed the beast, "I'm fine… compared to those poor, powerless mortals, I was never in any sort of danger." Arrika didn't bother mentioning how at least one of those 'powerless mortals' had weathered her ordeal without any special, supernatural resilience, and still had the grit left over to rally her fellow victims. "I'm just finding flesh to be a highly mixed blessing, even after all these years. For example, that's not exactly how I dreamed of being reintroduced to my breasts," she nursed her bruised chest, which still throbbed, "and I've decided that I really don't approve of the way this amorph artificial body interprets pain so realistically."

Wolf Link whined in concern, hunching down and offering Arrika his neck in a suggestive manner. His huge, animal eyes seemed to communicate his desire without words, and Arrika found that she understood immediately.

"You're concerned about me? You regret your hasty decision to leave me alone? You don't want to leave me alone again? You want me to ride on your back?" The wolf barked insistently at this last one, and Arrika considered the proposition with distaste.

"That's adorable, but I really wasn't endangered for even a moment. And, you know, I just got these feet back, and I was looking forward to moving under my own power for a bit…" her voice trailed off as she looked down the cobblestone street to see glass from shattered windows, splinters of wood with jutting nails, hot coals spat from burning piles of sundered building, and pools of blood, vomit, and excrement. "Yeah, um, nevermind. A ride would be delightful."

Wolf Link agreed, practically bowling her over to lever her up onto his broad back. The sudden flash of involuntary motion gave Arrika a surge of unexpected delight, and a scream of excitement bubbled up from deep within as the powerful muscles beneath her bunched and exploded with motion. It was all she could do to grab a fistful of fur and cling for dear life without dropping her sword as Wolf Link took off into the streets like he was shot from a cannon.

Their passage through the city was like a scene from some epic legend. Wolf Link was a blur of motion that traversed the ruins of Romali like a gust of wind, never slowing, never deflected from any course he chose for longer than it took him to find a way up and over the next obstacle. He struck through rioters and looters like a lightning flash of retribution, mostly ignoring mere thieves, but stopping to terrorize and maim murderers and rapists wherever he found them. Arrika helped, applying as much of her magic as she could while lacking the upper body strength to effectively swing her blade, which turned out to be more than enough to destroy the weapons right out of rioters' hands or slice their loot bags open. It was not until some time later, after their random course had routed the largest part of the riot out of the residential neighborhoods, that Arrika realized just how much attention they were drawing to themselves.

"Stop!" Arrika managed a breathless command, and Wolf Link came to rest atop a gutted bank. They were closer to the market district now, and the streets below them were filled with a milling crowd of maddened or catatonic demon victims.

"Oh my…" Arrika struggled to catch her breath, dismounting from her lupine steed and almost slipping on the bank's slopping tile roof. "This has been fun, Ziggy, but I think we could do with some kind of plan."

The wolf gave her an inquisitive sound, and she smiled at it.

"Yeah, I decided I'm going to call you Ziggurat until Link is back in that skull calling the shots. Anyway, I need to check up on him, and you need to lower our profile a bit. I'm all for protecting the innocent, but we're liable to start a brand new panic if we're not careful. Trust me, the only thing worse than an armed riot is an armed riot filled with people in immediate and unreasoning terror for their lives. Take last night, for example."

The wolf, for once, didn't seem to understand.

"Could you just, I don't know, lay low for a while? I want to run an idea by Link… I think it may give him partial control over his body again. For that, I have to go away for a while, which means I won't be here to supervise… okay? Just take a break, and I'll be back before you know it."

The wolf made an unhappy noise and settled onto its haunches, and then laid itself down on the precipice of the roof's edge, ignoring the potential for a fall. It growled menacingly, and Arrika didn't resist as the amorph melted in terror, but dropped her sword into its oozing mass as she was released back into spirit form. Without another word, but with a parting caress for the huge wolf, she vanished into its body.

The wolf was left alone and chastised into inactivity. That lasted for about five minutes before an extremely familiar, extremely important scent wafted by on a morning breeze, and he hardly hesitated a moment before zipping off over the rooftops to track it down.

**Arrika's Home**

When Arrika reappeared on the podium in the center of her Home, Link was sitting in a new chair sized for a full-grown man, watching the view of the real world on the same wall that had once shown a view of his Home. He was fully clothed again, though he still wore a farmhand's crude vest rather than his vagabond's traveling garb, and as she walked toward him, he cast her a strange look from under his short, unruly brown hair.

"What's that for?" Arrika asked, feeling a bizarre sense of guilt. Depending on how long he'd been watching through those wolf's eyes, there were any number of things from the past two hours that she wasn't exactly proud of. Confronted with the passions of flesh, she'd behaved less like an ancient being of immense power and more like an overpowered teen out for a joyride. Of course, she wasn't about to admit to any of that, and she gave Link her best expression of total innocence.

"Ah…" Link let the weight out of his stare suddenly, turning back toward the wall, where the wolf's eyes gave a view off the bank rooftop Arrika had just left. "It's nothing. I just feel pretty useless trapped here away from the action. Watching the wolf decimate those scumbags, even only one step removed from first-hand, just wasn't the same as doing it myself."

"Yeah…" Arrika remembered the hot joy of making her attacker hurt, not for her own satisfaction, but for what he'd done to the defenseless girls before her. Remembering that feeling was the largest reason that she couldn't do more than caution the brave rape victim against revenge—anything more would have made her feel a hypocrite. "Well, I can understand wanting to get a piece of them. It doesn't get much worse than using the chaos of a disaster to pillage, murder, and…"

Arrika hesitated. Although she'd teased him a few times back when she'd thought him merely another warrior to be kept at arm's length, she'd never actually broached the subject of sex with Link, consensual or otherwise. It was a silly thing to pause for, though, and he made that clear.

"Rape," Link finished for her, looking ready to spit. "No need to sugarcoat it on my behalf. I saw those women, the same as you. As far as I'm concerned, those men don't have any claim to humane treatment. They got what they deserved, and I wish I could have given it to them a bit more personally."

"Right… no arguments here." Arrika let it drop. For a farm-raised bumpkin, Link was never short of powerful convictions on matters of justice. Someday, Arrika would have to ask him about that.

"Anyway," Link felt the moment ripe for a change of subject, "I saw that stuff you were talking about. You were right, it really does make you look just like a regular human girl."

"Yeah, it's like a dream come true… sort of," Arrika replied, allowing the change, and hesitantly glad that the subject hadn't turned toward her recklessness. Now that it seemed he wasn't out to tease her as she'd often teased him, the urge to voice her own concerns was overwhelming. "Having a real body, a real presence in the physical world, is practically all I've wanted since the day I couldn't make one on my own anymore. Even the illusion that earned me the title of 'archangel' wasn't really alive, couldn't really feel, so you might call that miraculous blob the best thing that's happened to me since I was sacrificed into service."

"Well… um… congratulations, I guess." It was clear that even this much empathy was a lot for him to manage, under the circumstances. Arrika tried not to take it personally. "It's nice to see that something good came out of last night. Between that thing and the powers of this magical wolf creature my body transformed into, we've got plenty to think about, huh?"

"Right… yeah." Arrika didn't even try to keep the uncertainty out of her posture and tone, and Link really had no choice but to notice this time.

"So… I take it there's a problem?"

"Don't get me wrong," Arrika said, cringing in her discomfort, "having a body is a dream come true, and being able to talk to people I'm not bound soul-to-soul with was… well, pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the amorph gives me all the 'wondrous powers' of an average teenage girl, too. Mostly, that's the ability to become uncontrollably incensed, and otherwise led about by overpowering emotions. Frankly, I'm not sure how mortal teenagers ever manage."

"What's that matter?" Link sighed, sitting up to consider the city vista on the wall with a pensive stare. "Arrika, you've got a good head on your shoulders. That's besides untold lifetimes of experience and the responsibility of being custodian to a fell artifact of ancient and immeasurable power. Even with the handicap of being moodier than an expecting mother with achy feet, I'll bet you could still make more reasoned and balanced choices than even the smartest mortals. You just need to get used to it again, that's all."

Taken aback, Arrika clapped her mouth shut to quell the modest triviality she had almost reflexively spoken. Instead, she just enjoyed a silent moment, wondering what thoughts darkened Link's brow as he stared unseeing at the viewscreen wall. The timing was perfect, and Link sprung his vengeful trap, which Arrika had graciously walked right into.

"That said, I do wish you'd take better care of yourself when you use that thing for a body. I hate to think that anger makes you so sloppy that you allowed yourself to be manhandled, just to get a closer shot at your opponent." A smirk crept into Link's voice as Arrika stiffened in fresh embarrassment. "Honestly… the sheer inefficiency of it… and hand to hand combat? What happened to 'only poor people and latent homosexuals engage with their bare hands?'"

"Link!" Arrika protested, actually turning away in her distress. It was entirely improper for a woman of her advanced years to be as flustered as she'd suddenly become. She consoled herself by deciding that it was simply because they were both deep within their entwined Homes, a land of dreams, thought, and yes, emotions too. "I… was rather hoping you hadn't seen that part. It was hardly my finest moment."

"I didn't see anything," Link admitted, seeming not to notice how well he'd scored against her at last, "but it doesn't take a blademaster to reconstruct your fight from the scene left over and the mark on your neck."

Arrika consoled herself with the fact that Link hadn't witnessed the thug use her chest to practice his grip exercises, and then promptly steered the subject around the issue.

"I didn't think it would be fair or necessary to simply blow him to pieces, and I didn't want to terrorize my spectators anymore than necessary. You understand, right? How often did you pull your punches to look more human?"

Link flinched as though she'd stung him, and then slumped back into a depressed posture again. When he pressed his face into one hand to prop himself up, Arrika almost said something, but was beaten to the punch.

"I'm beginning to think that was a pretty vain mistake, Arrika," Link said, rather matter-of-fact about it. "If you look at in a certain perspective, trying to fool like I was still human stunted my powers, and so I wasn't ready for that demon."

"Well, yeah, if you look at it from a _stupid_ perspective," Arrika replied immediately. Now it was her turn to chastise him for harboring dumb misgivings. "The urge to blend in with society is powerful, Link. Look at me! I'm older than the mountains, and I still felt pressure to act human the moment the opportunity arose! If it is a vain mistake, it's one that's been made by smarter beings than you."

"I'll ignore the dig at my intelligence," Link answered, chuckling and perking up a bit, "and thank you. Still, it's past time for me to learn to control the Triforce. The thing has got to have more powers than just transforming me into various degrees of monster and giving me a death wish in combat."

"Of course it has more powers," Arrika said, using her mind to move a chair across the room and plant it next to Link. She flopped down next to him and joined him in watching the wolf's visual feed. "For example, it also makes Sword Maidens incredibly happy to know you."

"Right, so… one more tally in the 'powers I could do without' column." He kept his tone serious, but cracked a smile.

"Keep up that lip, buddy," Arrika said, "and I may never get around to fixing up my Home to let you control the wolf's body."

"Say what?" Link gave her his full attention.

"Well, I'm skilled enough to control my host's body a bit by influencing his Home from mine. That and a bit of push-and-pull through my sword was how I controlled your arm… Gods! Was it only yesterday?"

"Right! Holy Din, I'd nearly forgotten! To think, I was all ready to get ticked at you about that."

"Yes, well, demons do have a tendency to change one's priorities around."

"So, how does it work? And, how _well_ does it work?"

"Well," Arrika bit her lip, glancing around her Home, "it'd be better to show you, really."

Arrika waved one hand, and the short table and extra chairs shifted well away from them, leaving their chairs alone in front of the screen-wall. She snapped her fingers, and two black boxes rose up on either side of them, dark felt covering their facing sides, and immediately started pumping out the sound of sobbing, gibbering, and the distant noise of chaotic humanity. Once Link got over his shock, he realized it was the Wolf's hearing being routed in much as its vision was. Finally, Arrika reached under her chair and came back up holding something Link was sure hadn't been down there before. It was some sort of device all covered in strange knobs and protrusions, and molded to fit a person's hands.

"What's all this?" Link asked, bewildered by the sudden changes.

"Call it a relic from my upbringing in a bygone era. It's simply how I visualize controlling an avatar's body. As for how well it works… well… the short answer is: not very. Just hold this 'controller' and think about moving the subject's body, and if it's not trying to resist, and a hundred other variables align favorably, the subject will move that way."

"Wonderful," Link felt his excitement deflate almost painfully, "I'm sure I'll hardly miss living in my own skin a bit!"

"Hey now, at least it's something!" Arrika smacked Link with the controller, which he took from her, just to let it slip from his hand to the deep, soft carpet with a thud. "Anyway," Arrika glowered at him, "It'll let us keep in touch when I astral project. Speak into the controller, and it'll be like you're sub-vocalizing in the wolf's mind. In short, it'll be like the times I spoke to you while riding in your body."

"So I can make snide comments and have witty little chats with the wolf?" Link asked, dripping with sarcasm.

"I'll hear it too," Arrika replied, caustic. "That, and the wolf is much more cooperative than some people I could name. It might just listen to your requests, if control doesn't work out."

"Wonderful." He almost ended it there, but he couldn't stop himself. "You couldn't have given me this thing before you ditched me here earlier…?" Link asked, and hesitated, perhaps realizing he was going too far.

"I only just thought of it!" Arrika stood up and tossed her arms to the sky in frustration. "Gods! I'm going to go back and hang out with the wolf! At least he didn't bitch about every little thing!"  
"Wait, I'm sorry!" Link stood up, too. The height and size difference between them was suddenly emphasized, as Arrika had to sneer upward a good foot to give him the stink-eye. "I didn't mean that. I'm just, you know, frustrated by… all this…"

Arrika tried to keep her anger going, but eventually was forced to relent. He really did seem apologetic, and she'd been a freshly disembodied entity once too, after all. The dreamland of Home was a perfect representation of one's most comfortable environment, but it wasn't _real_, and it was startling how much of a difference that made.

"Whatever." Arrika shook out her hair, weaving a dozen braids into it with a whimsical flourish of control over her Home. "I'm going to go back out to the world so you can test how good I am at improvising my powers over to you. Try not to go stir-crazy in the meantime, okay?"

"I'll try to cool down a bit, I promise," Link held himself in his most conciliatory posture until Arrika stopped drilling her serious eyes into his conscience.

As she moved back to the platform in the center of her Home, Arrika found herself torn. On the one hand, leaving aside the shell of teasing and frivolity that had served to insulate her from contractors most of her life was exhilarating and enjoyable. On the other hand, it was already creating new friction.

"Wow," Link said behind her, already talking to himself. "I forgot how well a wolf can move. But gosh, without being hooked into smell, what's even the point?"

"Wait… move?" Arrika turned back to see the screen showing a cityscape rushing by in a spectacular blur.

And then, just as suddenly as the wolf had begun, it stopped, its view overlooking some kind of major, central Romali plaza. It took Arrika a moment to recognize the crossroads where she'd destroyed the owl-creature the night before, and another moment before she began to understand the strange gathering taking place beneath the wolf's rooftop perch.

The plaza was full to bursting with people, a crowd as tightly pressed as the maddened, battling multitude that had been here to witness the death of the giant owl-demon. A huge number of them were obviously stragglers that had never left, and yet despite the way that the same horrors they'd endured had twisted so many of their countrymen, these people seemed lucid, even focused. To the last, the huge crowd had devoted their attention to the very center of the plaza, where a broken statue of some anonymous Don had been covered over with an improvised pulpit. From that lofty perch, a robed man with wild eyes exhorted the people with a voice edged in madness. Entranced, no one in the audience seemed to mind that foam frothed at the corners of the preacher's mouth.

Even as the wolf looked down in agitated interest, more and more people squeezed into the crowded crossroad, brought by the rumors passing from mouth to mouth, or by the curious and welcome lack of violence and apparent security of such a gathering. By a rough estimation, Arrika could tell that something like a tenth of the city's remaining population was stuffed into earshot of this ranting crackpot, and when she finally picked up on the content of his rambling tirade, she knew exactly why.

"Oh, this is trouble," Arrika groaned, drawing Link's attention as she slapped both hands over her face and bent under a sudden weariness. Link didn't get it, he didn't understand what he was seeing, or why the wolf had come there. Arrika, on the other hand, knew a major religious schism when she inadvertently caused it.

"Nayrue, Farore, and Din!" Link cursed, dashing over for a closer look at the screen. "Look at that crater! It's like someone set off an entire cartload of bombs!"

"Or, maybe, like someone crashed a burning owl-demon into a lamp-oil factory?" Arrika said, as she recalled her battle the night before and speculated about the scene she'd found. Link turned on her with a dubious expression, and she gave him her most innocent in return.

"What? _I_ didn't do it! The mess was already there when I arrived last night." Arrika assumed an air of utmost dignity and turned up her nose. "Honestly, I was close to peak power last night. I would _think_ I could handle a simple minion without having to wreck a bunch of property in the process."

"Is there any way you can interpret the wolf's sense of smell onto the screen, or rig up some way to figure out what scent he's tracking?" The change in subject was abrupt, and Arrika had to take a moment and shift gears in her brain.

"Um, perhaps. Why do you ask?" Even as she prompted Link to explain, Arrika began twiddling her fingers meaningfully, making the necessary changes to her Home's configuration.

"Wolves don't use their eyes too much until they're right on top of prey. At this distance, it must have been something the wolf smelled that brought him here." Link spoke with authority one would hardly have expected an uneducated farmhand-cum-soldier to posses, and Arrika arched a brow. "Something strange is going on—look at the way those people have surrounded that crater, almost like they're enshrining it. I think there's something there in the middle of all that wreckage, but I can't tell from this far away. I have a bad feeling…"

"Let's try this," Arrika finished her newest alteration, and the screen was overlain with a rainbow of highlights in an unbelievable panoply of mixtures including practically every color that the mind could conceive. "The colors match powerful scents, I think, like that brown all over the sky is probably wood smoke, and the crimson-bronze is likely blood. Wow, yeah, you were right, Link, there's a lot going on in this guy's nose."

"Can you narrow it down to the scent he's focused on, or—I don't know—show us what he thinks he's found?" Link seemed more and more distressed, and Arrika was glad for the distraction. Anything was better than imagining what havoc she'd wrought in popular faith with her display of divine powers last night.

"I think… yes. Look here," Arrika created a new screen to one side. At the same time, the colors on the first screen were scrubbed away until only a single meandering cloud of purple-red extended from the center of the crater that the mesmerized crowds were avoiding despite the overwhelming press of bodies on all sides of it. On the new screen, a list of rectangular images that Link recognized as being plucked from his own memories began to line up in rows and columns.

There was burnt flesh from his own arm during a close call with the dragon at the sky temple. There was charred wood from some anonymous campfire among the thousands he'd known. There was the lingering smoke venting from an emptied lantern that had burned all night. And last, but not least, there was Anthony 'Tony' Giovanni, the shrimpy herald that had followed Link through thick and thin since their fateful meeting in the Caredan hinterlands.

"Oh… no…" Link staggered away from the screen, collapsing into his chair and going limp with shock. "Not Tony. Not Leeta _and_ Tony…"

"Wait," Arrika rushed up to put her hands on Link's shoulders and force some life back into him. "You can't think this means… I mean, it isn't like… how could Tony have possibly been involved in that explosion? I was just there… it can't have been… uh…"

"Get closer," Link said, and Arrika saw that he had the controller in his hand. The limp disbelief had been replaced by empty resignation, and she removed her hands and backed away before she had to see any more of the miserable intensity decorating his features.

The wolf obeyed, and leaped from rooftop to rooftop with supernatural grace, even clearing the enormous breadth of the major street they were skirting with only a moderate strain. They arrived on the mostly-whole building that had once been next to the lamp-oil factory completely undetected by the mesmerized crowds. From this close, it was obvious that in addition to the fanatic in the center, another group of self-appointed priests had formed a viewing area enforced by swords, keeping the eager press of the crowd away from the epicenter of the kerosene explosion.

In the very center, where once there had been the violently dissolving body of the owl demon next to the hole its girth had dug by impact force, there was instead a single human lying in undisturbed peace. Almost the entire left side of his body was charred bone-deep, leaving a blackened, hideous skeleton and a rough edge of charcoal flesh that bled into his more or less intact right side. By the one-third of his face that was not a charred and blistered mask from the bleakest nightmare, it was clear that it could be no one else but Tony.

At first, it was not obvious what the significance of his body was, or why it had been tied into this Church of Dio revival meeting. And then, Arrika noticed the char marks around the body had a particular shape. When she finally saw it, she couldn't understand how she'd missed it, because the un-burnt areas around the body held the shape of angelic wings—wings she'd worn herself in a bygone era. In her complete angelic form, she had a pelisse cape of feathers, a small thing that covered only her left shoulder and down to her hip. She called it her pinion, and when it transformed into a set of wings, it gave her the power of flight, among others. It had not appeared last night when she'd constructed her body, and now she knew why.

"The blessed fool martyred himself," Arrika said, and it came out as a bare whisper. "He's touched the sword… he must have made a prayer of true faith to Dio, the Father. It hasn't worked in ages, but with all the strength I've pulled from you lately… and I didn't imagine it could function, so I haven't been monitoring… oh my God and Goddess."

"No, he's no martyr," Link hardly dared to breathe the words, all gone to cold indifference at the sight of his ruined friend.

"Yes—I thought it must have been one of those catapults that downed the owl before I arrived, but it was Tony! I don't know what possessed him, but it was strong enough that the answer to the prayer he made was taken right out of my hide! The Trinity being said they didn't have the power to grant me my pinion, but they must have meant they didn't have the power to take it back from an anointed supplicant. If I'd even dreamed it could happen, I would have blocked the prayer… how in the world…?"

"Arrika," Link's voice was a droning emptiness, "he's not a martyr."

"Um… yeah… he—" Arrika started to argue, and then her breath caught in her throat. The wolf's predator eyes noticed motion where there should be none, and the horror of it was enough to stagger even Arrika's jaded psyche.

"You have to die to become a martyr," Link finished.

Beneath them, Tony was still breathing.

**Second Full Revision Notes:**

No comment.


	24. Home Invasion

No excuses. Please enjoy.

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 10: Home Invasion**

**Arrika's Home**

"Is there anything we can do for him?" Link asked. Over the past long moments of silent horror, his expression had slowly faded from pained to merely distant and empty. Seeing where his empty eyes were fixed, it wasn't hard to imagine why.

On the wall that displayed what Link's transformed, lupine body was looking at out in the real world, Tony was slowly breathing. He was still alive, despite the fact that more than a third of his body was burnt away until only black-charred bone and blistered flesh remained.

"I…" Arrika was still having trouble finding words. She had witnessed untold horrors in her long life, but they didn't usually happen to friends. This was a fresh nightmare to add to her menagerie. "I… well… I…"

"_Arrika_," Link's firmer tone snapped her back, despite the fact that it was devoid of all emotion.

"Burns are bad, Link," Arrika said, the knowledge suddenly flowing out in a rush. "There's no wound more painful, and practically nothing more likely to become putrid. Honestly, if it was just his limbs and a bit of skin here and there, we could try to amputate and treat the skinless areas with magic medicine. But… I mean… that wound to his torso…"

She didn't have to finish her evaluation. Link had seen enough wounds in his time, mostly ones he himself had caused to others, to know fatal damage when he saw it. Asking Arrika's opinion had been a mere formality his conscience wouldn't let him avoid.

"Right," he cut in, saving her from finishing her grim report, "a fifth of his belly is gone. He's liable to have lost some vitals. But... even with that..." Link found himself grasping at straws, "couldn't magic medicine still work? Mine's been lost in this transformation, but there must be more apothecaries in the city. It's worth a try, right?"

Arrika huffed, a sound that would have been a chuckle under less grim circumstances.

"Link, I understand how your perspective could be skewed, with all that you've experienced, but not just anyone can bounce back from mortal wounds like you can." The ancient recalled the apparently fatal bow wound Link had shrugged off after a breather and a raw magic infusion, not even twenty four hours ago. To a man who lived life with a body like Link's, any wound might seem survivable.

"If a regular person, someone not pumped thick with godly magic, takes even a two-inch deep stab wound, death is almost certain. Magic medicine works great on lacerations, bruises, and minor puncture wounds, but it really falls short on organ damage and badly broken bones. There's no medicine I've ever heard of that will actually bring back eviscerated organs or severed limbs."

"Right," Link's voice was distant, disconnected, like he was talking in his sleep. "I guess... that means that the real question is how he lived even this long."

"It was the pinion," Arrika had no hesitation in answering that one. She'd realized it almost immediately. "It's a cape that covers one shoulder. It shielded half his body from burns, and is probably anchoring his life force to his body even now. Answering 'true faith prayers' was originally a method for helping mortal soldiers succeed when they committed suicidal acts of bravery on our behalf during the Genesis Wars. Among other things, it allowed them to survive otherwise mortal wounds until…" she paused, burdened by ancient sorrows, "until the fight was over. Infused like that, they could fight until they were hacked to pieces, and sometimes even the _pieces_ would live on until we could claim our power back from them."

"Wow," Link said, finally turning from the heart-rending sight of his friend's shattered body.

"Yeah…" Arrika pulled herself out of her past agonies only with difficulty. "Those wars got _real_ ugly toward the end. We had so much power back then that we could imbue whole battalions of martyr soldiers to follow us into the demonic breach portals without really losing any of our own combat effectiveness. Of course, virtually none of them ever came back with us." She paused for a moment, chewing her lip, and finally found the will to speak out on the glimmer of a chance that did exist.

"It's not like its hopeless, though, Link." Even as she found her caveats, her mind insistently picked them apart, and she was too flustered to keep from voicing every thought. "I mean, yeah, it's pretty grim, but we did manage to save some of those soldiers from their wounds before reclaiming our power. Of course, medical magic was much more advanced back then, but even today, if we could find a Great Fairy... _IF_ we could find a Great Fairy, we could get Tony's body patched up." Arrika cringed. "Of course, that says nothing of what state his mind is in at this point. The hallmark of those who can successfully make true faith prayers is abject fanaticism. Between the demon's fear aura and the agony of his burns, who knows if what comes out of this will be a person even _remotely_ like the Tony we knew?"

At length, Arrika realized her 'optimistic' endeavor was entirely counter-productive, and shut up. Link halfway opened his mouth to mention the Great Fairy of Hyrule he'd once met, but shut it immediately when he remembered there was no magic he knew that could get her here or Tony there. For a while, there was an uncomfortable silence between them. Arrika blamed herself for not blocking Tony's prayer, while Link blamed himself for ever having met Tony in the first place. They were equally foolish as grounds for guilt, but guilt was all that either of them was interested in feeling at that moment. At least until Link finally made his decision.

"Arrika," he said, voice still even and empty, "I want you to do anything you can to help Tony." He walked up to her and took her small hand in his big, calloused paws. "Even if it's just a merciful end and a proper burial. Do you understand?"

"Link?" Arrika was stunned. She'd never seen him so solemn and serious in all their travels. Even when he'd been crushed by Leeta's death at his hands, it had been a matter of pain and guilt. This was empty, an emotional void backed up with ironclad willpower and solid resolve.

"Do you understand?" he asked her again. There was a connection as their eyes met. Trust and need were lurking far beneath that icy facade, and it was more than Arrika could do to even try and decline his request.

"I'll do everything I can," she agreed. "But what about you? You're going to be right here, you can supervise."

"I won't," Link said, "I'm not going to be here. I can't just sit around passively and watch the consequences of my mistakes paraded around as one pack of horrors after another."

"What?" Arrika was rooted to the spot in confusion as Link pulled away from her and began to march toward the curving door of her bastion in his Home. "Link, where do you think you're going?" She chased after him and turned him around with a hand on his elbow, and when she saw his face again, she gasped and stepped back. His empty expression was now wracked with a deep, implacable pain. "Link, just tell me, alright? What's going on?"

"I'm not going to just sit here and be a useless observer," Link answered, after he marshaled his expression back to neutrality. "I appreciate what you did, trying to give me some connection to the real world from here, but what use is it all, really? Watching though eyes that aren't mine to direct, making 'suggestions' to some wolf that already knows my mind, anyway—it's _pointless_. Especially when I could be out doing what I should have done from the first moment I knew I wasn't going back to reality anytime soon."

"Okay, so you're going out into your Home," Arrika nodded him along, humoring him, "but why? What do you hope to achieve out in that mess?"

"Well, _this_ place is here," Link said, almost making it an accusation, "and it represents my connection to you. I'm also connected to the Triforce. My 'fate'" his face soured at the word, "seems to doom me and all around me to horrors like _this,"_ he pointed to Tony's shattered body on the viewing screen. "It's past time for me to get a real handle on the only edge I've got as far as beating back this nightmare tide! I'm not wasting another minute."

"I have to make sure I'm strong enough to control the situation the next time something like this happens." His eyes became hard and miserable. "Because there _will_ be a next time. The _gods_ only know how many 'next times,' I'll face, and I have to be ready." Once again, his face emptied of all emotion, his mouth set into a grim line, and he turned away. "I owe Tony that much. Him, and everyone else who died or went mad last night because I wasn't ready for 'fate's' latest sucker-punch."

"Link, you can't blame yourself—" Arrika began, but Link shouted her down.

"_Then who can I blame_?" he snapped, not bothering to face her again. "Demons? Killing us is why they _exist_, it's not a choice they make, _right_? You might as well blame a tornado. Or how about the gods? Their job is to make sure the sun rises every day. I figure putting me here in time for this travesty was their way of getting that much done. Everything after that was up to _me,_ and maybe if I'd faced up to the tools they forced upon me instead of burying my head in the sand, I'd have prevented a little bit of collateral damage along the way!"

"You're a stubborn idiot!" Arrika told him, and the pure vitriol of those words was finally enough to give him pause. He stood over by the door, his head hanging down, and had no reply. "This could be your last chance to talk to Tony, your friend, and instead of facing up to what's happened to him, you're going to go gallivanting around the astral plane on a wild goose chase! Is that really how you want to spend Tony's… his…"

"His final moments?" Link asked. The unspoken accusation of cowardice hung between them. "What possible good could I do sitting here feeling sorry for myself and for Tony? I won't get to talk to him either way, the most presence I could possibly have is for moral support. This may be a long-shot, but it's the only chance I've got to do something halfway worthwhile until I have a physical body again. I can't afford to put it off any longer."

It was around this moment that Arrika realized a startling, situation-changing fact. Link _didn't want to go_. There was a strain around his shoulders and clenched fists that suggested he might well be more frightened by the thought of stepping out into that storm than at any previous point in their acquaintance. He tried to hide it, but every subtle element of his body language screamed his fear, his desire to stay and punish himself over Tony's fate, and of the iron willpower it took him to stay facing toward the door while she held him up, giving him every excuse to turn back.

"Okay, Link," Arrika relented, "you're guilty about Tony's… 'sacrifice,'" she found her own anger cooling in the face of that truth, "and you feel like you need to be doing something, anything at all to make up for it. I understand that." Arrika paused. If guilt over Tony's death is what it took for him to face this towering fear he'd held buried here, deep in his psyche, she couldn't waste it, no matter how tasteless it might be for him to force Tony's 'recovery' solely onto her. "So go ahead and go. There's no guarantee that you'll find a connection to the Triforce in your Home… but it makes sense. I'll… 'take care' of Tony. If there's anything at all to be done for him, I'll do it."

"Thank you," Link said, the words infused with heartfelt gratitude and a generous helping of relief. Then, the strain about his body tensed anew, and he made for the door.

He reached out to it, and it sucked inward and slid to one side in a flash. A torrential blast of rain instantly flowed through, the fury of the storm that was so effectively blocked out by Arrika's slice of Home suddenly immediate and punishing in its intensity. Ignoring the downpour, Link slid on his boots and got ready to throw himself into the storm.

"Wait!" Arrika stopped him on the threshold, and the two of them stood there together, getting thoroughly soaked. "This storm represents serious mental and spiritual trauma!" Arrika shouted over the noise of the rain and wind, "it may not be real, but it can still be dangerous. If you just go out there unprotected, you could lose your sense of self, and wind up wandering around in a daze!"

"So what do I do about it?" Link shouted back. It was patently absurd for them to be discussing this in the threshold of her Home with this hurricane buffeting them, but his resolve was too fragile to risk taking a step back inside, and she was too stubborn to let him walk off unwarned.

"You need to manifest something to anchor your mind. Try and imagine some memory of yours, something happy and warm. Symbolism is effective on the astral plane, so if the memory has to do with rain, especially with keeping the rain off, you'll be covered better."

"I have no idea how to do that," Link said, unabashed by his own utter incompetence in this case.

"You're hopeless," Arrika accused, but she was smiling again. Closing her eyes, she held out her hands and pulled some kind of cloak right out of the thin air. It was sky blue and covered with a pattern of identical yellow images. "This is a memory of something that was very dear to me, back before I was sacrificed into service. It should have some power to shield you, even outside of my Home."

She wasted no time in wrapping it around Link's head and draping it over his shoulders. Sized for a small child, it barely came to his hips, but he couldn't deny the sudden surge of warmth and comfort as it settled over him. For his part, the first thing he did was take a closer look at the yellow pattern decorating every inch of the sturdy little rain cloak.

"Seriously?" he asked, smirking, and turned a raised eyebrow toward Arrika, "Duckies?"

"How would you like a knuckle sandwich?" Arrika brandished a petite fist at him. She was out in this hideous storm, her platinum hair and green dress were already plastered to her body by the rain, all to help him, and he was making jokes. It was obviously gallows humor on his part, a last attempt to settle his frayed nerves, and so she shrugged it off.

"That won't protect you forever." She leveled upon him her most serious expression, unable to hide her low opinion of this entire endeavor. "Amidst damage like this, it won't even protect you for very long. If it does fail, and you do lose yourself, I'll come in and pull you out. Time doesn't mean much here, especially under these conditions, so you'll just have to sit tight and wait however long it takes for me to find you. In the worst case, you might not escape this morass and regain consciousness again until all this damage actually heals."

"I"ll just have to work quickly then, won't I?" Link's resolution was hanging by a thread, and at the last, despite everything, Arrika couldn't stop herself from trying to discourage him.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked. "Can't the search wait until your mind has healed?"

"Wish me luck," Link said, somberly shutting himself off from that tantalizing appeal. Whether determined to punish himself or stubbornly set upon doing the right thing, no matter if it was a terrible time to try it, Link would not be budged. The fact that he clearly, so very clearly _wanted_ to be budged only made the effort of will that much more impressive.

"Yeah, right. Good luck," Arrika obliged him only grudgingly. Despite her misgivings, she continued to stand in the rain as he turned away and faced out onto the endless stormy wasteland. He slowly built up into a flat-out run, and when he disappeared into the swirling downpour a few seconds later, Arrika finally stepped back inside. The door swished shut behind her, and she was once again alone in her pristine, inviolate sanctuary.

She found herself unable to get past the tiled threshold, and for a while she just leaned back into door and let the water drip off her body. The quiet sound of droplets hitting the tiles was strangely intense after the throbbing power of the storm. Eventually, however, Arrika peeled herself off the door, wiped most of the water from her face and hair, and slapped her cheeks repeatedly, as though she were trying to wake herself up.

"Steady, old girl," she said to herself, "remember, the coward just left all the dirty work to you. I mean, wouldn't you rather face a potentially endless storm of uncertain doom for a mere chance at making contact with an artifact of the elder gods that also represents your greatest fear…" she looked back over to the screen, "than watch the death of a good friend under the fawning eyes of ten thousand half-crazed religious zealots?"

With a sigh of resignation, Arrika magically undid the buttons down the back of her drenched green dress and stripped out of it. She made a gesture at the air, and dozens of soft blue towels appeared from nowhere to scrub her down at high speed. When they cleared away, she was wearing a blue terrycloth bathrobe and one of the towels remained behind to wrap up her hair.

Of course, she was in her Home, and not even the peculiar strength of the psychic residue from Link's mental and spiritual damage, symbolized in this place by the water, was enough to slacken her control of the environment. She could have just snapped her fingers and made herself dry and comfortable. Still, what was the point of having total control over a magical world of perfect illusions if you couldn't indulge in soft, warm cloth and similar luxuries?

"Right, might as well get this over with," Arrika muttered, and whipped the towel off of her hair. The braids she'd woven into it on a whim earlier were gone, and it shook out perfectly dry, tidy, and pristine, proving just how fake this whole place was. Even the softness of the bathrobe was just a half-forgotten memory drummed up out of the distant past, although Arrika missed even that much sensation as she shucked the garment and stood once more in the tank top and shorts that were her customary garb at Home. Of course, these delightful illusions were all she'd had for an eternity, perhaps explaining why she'd found the real sensations of reality to be such a mixed blessing.

Without another word, Arrika marched over to the pedestal in the center of her Home and projected herself out into the astral plane proper.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

"Your majesty?" a page stepped tentatively into Zelda's new room, the hotel's second finest. After the antics of the night before, she'd moved from a room with a vast, walk-out balcony to one where the windows could be shuttered as easily as the door was locked, just in case of further unexpected light shows. The order of the day was damage control and information management, and Zelda was so used to the constant flow of reports coming in that she barely nodded to acknowledge the thick package of messages this liveried boy placed on her desk. He bowed and left, seeming grateful to be out of her intense presence, shutting the door securely behind him.

"Anything?" she asked herself, without looking up from the report of rumors spreading through Castle Town or stopping her pen from writing out counter-rumors for her agents to spread in response.

"_No, it doesn't seem like he could see, either,_" answered the perfect clone of Zelda that was standing at prim attention midway between the door and the desk where the original Zelda worked. "_So far it seems that these 'projections' of ours can't be seen using normal senses. Although, it's still entirely possible that magic and other extra-normal perceptions could detect us_."

"'Us?'" Zelda caught the term and picked it out for dissection, "do you feel any distress referring to yourself that way? There could be serious problems if one of these projections develops an independent ego and wanders off on its own agenda."

"_I'm you_," the clone answered, "_you're me. There is only 'our' agenda. It's hard to understand, I know, but we'll get it, eventually_."

"And then of course, you might already be lying to me. How should we respond to that possibility?" And it was a possibility, although she felt it probably wasn't too likely, or she never would have begun these experiments.

"_We're having some kind of communication breakdown,_" the clone sighed and wandered slightly further away. "_We're not talking about some 'secondary cycle' that can suddenly express independent opinions_. I_ am _you. We _are_ us_._ _Hmm, there aren't any better words than those, although they really don't suffice_."

Zelda frowned and shook her head. Technically, she was playing with fire right now. It was supposedly possible for people to develop multiple personalities within a single mind. She had three minds, and late last night, she'd wondered how she'd avoided having three different 'Zeldas' inside of her, battling for dominance, what with her condition giving a ripe opportunity for such disorders. Exhaustion had claimed her before she'd answered that question, but when she awoke this morning, it was so obvious, she couldn't understand how it had ever confused her.

Trinity. Three-in-one. It was the nature of the Triforce and it occupied Zelda's dream prominently on the night after 'the episode' that still eluded her clear remembering. At first it had all been abstract and impenetrable, as uselessly symbolic and vague as a prophecy. Then, she'd recognized herself in the fugue, and the revelation came to her at the very instant of awakening.

Up until now, Zelda had considered the extra two 'cycles' of her mind as some kind of strange new tool she'd picked up as her powers developed. The idea of those tools gaining personality and independence and gallivanting off to abuse her powers was understandably nightmarish. However, that understanding was out of date, and it had taken her a while to understand just how outdated it really was. At some point, quite possibly during last night's large blank space in her memory, herself and these secondary 'minds' of hers had all folded together, and in the stark light of morning, something had become very clear. Zelda could no longer tell which 'cycle' was 'her' and which were the new additions. They all felt the same to her, or rather, they all felt like necessary parts of some greater whole.

That, then, became her certainty, and a fresh terror. At some point, she'd become an individual in three parts. On the one hand, it was unnatural and deeply disturbing, and she'd barely begun to investigate possible side effects. On the other hand, it was unlikely that her consciousness was going to dissolve into a psychotic internal power struggle for individual dominance. After all, how could one side of an equal triangle claim dominance over the others?

This new power of hers could be equated to disconnecting her arm and sending it off on a mission—the clones might seem to act on their own, but they were just fragments of her unified will darting about the astral plane. Setting aside the harrowing identity crisis of suddenly awakening to a unified personality parted out into independent sections, it gave her enough confidence to go through with these experiments. After all, these powers likely weren't going away on their own, and the sooner she had a conscious understanding of how they functioned, the sooner she could be certain they wouldn't blow up in her face, and the sooner she could put them to work.

"No, I think I rather do understand. We wouldn't have begun these tests, otherwise." Zelda hesitated for one last, uncomfortable moment. "Do whatever feels natural," she eventually sighed, "I have a feeling I'd know if you were lying—I know all my own tells, after all."

"_Well then, if that's settled, I doubt I need to remind us that we are incredibly curious._" The clone smiled, and Zelda had a bizarre feeling that she was looking into a surreal mirror. The insane pronoun use didn't help one bit. "_The question is: How will our trifurcated consciousness adapt to spreading its parts beyond the range of instantaneous gestalt in our skull?_"

"My thoughts exactly," Zelda said, finally changing her expression to a smile and making the clone's face a more natural sort of mirror. "So let's experiment! I've yet to examine that new missive on the desk, I can only speculate as to what it says. Investigate it."

The clone obediently walked over and appeared to lean against the opposite side of Zelda's desk. It reached down to pick up the envelope, only for its hand to go right through the desk. It looked up at Zelda and gave her an amused shrug.

"_No body_," the clone explained.

"Right, I anticipated that, but it pays to make sure. Here," Zelda quickly popped open the missive package and laid its pages across the far end of her desk, carefully keeping her eyes on the ceiling. "Can you read it?"

"_I... can!_" The clone said, sounding shocked.

Zelda felt shock of her own; she'd been betting against this eventuality. Just to be sure, Zelda hopped out of her chair and went to stand by the window, looking out at the city and completely away from the letters and reports on her desk.

"How about now?" she asked, resisting the paranoid fear of letting the clone out of her sight.

"_Yep, still reading them._" Zelda's double sounded rather cheery as she explored the extent of her odd existence. "_Note, however, I can't seem to do that trick where we unfocus our eyes and read two different pages at the same time_."

"I'd like to know how you can see, _period,"_ Zelda frowned, "Considering that you haven't got any eyes! As far as I can tell, the clone bodies are just an illusion constructed by my perceptions to interpret the cycles that leave my head. I thought that maybe our senses were still linked, and you were seeing through our body's eyes... so much for that."

"_Well, of course, there are ways to see that don't require eyes_," the clone speculated. "_Could this be some kind of magical perception_?"

"Yes, but in that case," Zelda paced back to the center of the room, expression sour as she puzzled over these bizarre mechanics, "why couldn't you read the pages while they were still inside the envelope? That shouldn't have been any barrier to magical perception."

"_Right, well, let's note that down for future exploration,_" the clone struck a contemplative pose, "_We should gather comprehensive data before we get bogged down in any one detail_."

"Yes..." Zelda had to catch herself before she automatically reacted with apprehension. The clone was _her._ It having a good idea while it was over there was no different than it having a good idea when it was in her head... because there was no 'it.' 'It' was all _her._ Zelda quietly cursed the limitations of her own language and pledged to make up new pronouns for entities with partitioned consciousnesses. "Range test next," she said, only to realize that she and the clone had said the words simultaneously.

"_Great minds think alike_?" the clone guessed. "_Anyway, I'll head out to the city limits, or until I can't go any further. Why don't you loose another third and cover some other areas while I check this out_?"

Before she could confirm that this plan sounded fine, the clone floated a few feet into the air, her gown of office billowing on some imaginary wind, and then vanished right through the hotel wall and into the sky beyond.

"They can fly?" Zelda tilted her head in skepticism, but then shook it off. "_Of__ course_ I can fly in astral form."

Refusing to be disoriented by all that was happening, Zelda marched back to her comfortable desk chair and seated herself in a regal pose. She accessed a familiar sensation one more time, and yet again, a clone rose up out of her body. In her head, Zelda felt only a single cycle running, a solitary mind thinking individual thoughts, if still faster than a normal mind could even imagine. It was not until she looked down and saw herself standing in the chair that she suddenly realized _she_ was the clone this time. Except...

"_Oh_!" the clone Zelda looked down at the Zelda occupying their physical body, still possessed of that skeptical air, and immediately covered half her face with her open palm in sheer exasperation. "_Now I get it! We're the same. Er... I mean, I'm you_!"

"Are we going to go through all of this again every time I let another cycle out to play?" the Zelda in their body asked.

"_No, no, no_!" the newest projection complained, wracking her considerable knowledge for the right words. "_This whole time we've been talking about clones and copies, but that's not the right word at all. These projections are _fragments_ of us. It's all so _obvious_ now..._"

The physical Zelda glowered, showing that it was not obvious at all, from her perspective.

"_It's that body_," the newly phantasmal Zelda soundlessly snapped fingers that could not touch anything, much less one another, as she realized what was wrong. "_The body gives what's left of us an improper sense of supremacy. We know—we felt it when two thirds of us were still in there. Quickly, send out the last third—once we're completely in the astral realm, I think a great many things will clear up_."

"What about our body?" the last fragment of Zelda still clinging to flesh was dubious on this plan, to say the least. "Sending out the spare cycles is one thing, but I can't just... _leave_ my body!"

"_Holy Din_!" the phantom Zelda resisted the urge to shout further. "_Were we always this stubborn? There are no 'spare cycles' anymore. Here, let me show you_."

The phantom immediately jumped right back into their body. In a fractional instant, the two that had been separate were made whole again, and Zelda had to shake off a disorienting duality as she remembered the last few moments from two separate perspectives.

"Oooooh!" she groaned at her own obtuse misunderstanding. It was all so _clear_ now. Without further hesitation, Zelda forced the entirety of her consciousness from the confines of her flesh. Her body slumped back in the chair, eyes wide open but devoid of intellect and personality as not one, but two phantasms, linked arm in arm, rose primly from the chair and into the astral realm.

"_Incredible_," the two perfect copies of Zelda spoke with the same voice. Almost as an afterthought, they let go of one another, floating apart a few feet and turning to face each other again.

"_We're not worried about personality disorders anymore, right_?" Said one of the pair.

"_We're not so sure, actually. It's easy to see that we'll probably be working toward the same goal without any trouble, but this is still fairly disturbing_." The whole conversation was, of course, a farce. Zelda was playing devil's advocate to herself. The only difference from a regular, contemplative person was that the voice of doubt and the voice of advocacy came from different 'throats.'

"_This will be incredibly useful_," the first one assured the second. "_As long as we're careful_."

"_And if we're not careful, we'll go stark, raving insane_." That reply rather depressed them both, but it was no less true for being an unwelcome thought.

"_Wow, the gang's all here_?" asked the projection from earlier as it ghosted back into their office and unconsciously took up position to put them into equilateral triangle formation. "_Glad to see we took our recommendation to experiment seriously_."

"_Actually, we think we're just about done experimenting now_," said the two thirds who had recently been one, in perfect unison.

"_Ah, well, majority rules, right? Let's bring it in, girls_." The latest arrival and her two twins took several dainty steps forward in a motion that looked like some kind of elaborate manipulation of mirrors, so precise was their synchronization. They met at the center of their triangle and each reached out one finger toward a meeting point. When they touched, their images wavered, phased out, and reappeared. Combined, complete, Zelda's astral form was herself three times, the three copies standing back to back forming a triangle facing outward.

"_I don't know if I'll ever get used to this feeling_," Zelda spoke with three unified voices. Three hands went to three heads to settle her disorientation. "_On the other hand, I think I'm finally getting the hang of this_."

Suddenly, the door opened, and another messenger stepped in with a new bundle of missives in hand. He took one look at Zelda's body slumped back, limp in her chair, and opened his mouth to shout an alarm. Zelda waved an astral hand at him, and he froze, alarm unvoiced. With all due dignity, Zelda settled herself back into her body, which sprang up gently, as though she'd awoken from a pleasant nap. She flicked one finger, and the young page was alive and moving again. His shout died on his lips, and he did a double-take, but eventually, he simply dropped the missive on Zelda's desk and left again with a bow.

Zelda was still processing all that had come together from the disparate fragments of her multi-self. Her thoughts eventually caught on one of the missives she'd read as a mere test, and a plan formed almost instantly. Action followed thought so quickly that the page hadn't even gotten out the door.

"Page," Zelda stopped him. He turned and bowed again. "I've received an invitation to a gala at the Merchant's Guild. Inform my staff that I plan to attend, and to make all due preparations."

These new abilities of hers were interesting, but Zelda had more immediate problems. Rumor control from one step removed was never going to get the situation to come to heel. A social event like the Merchant's Guild Ball would let her get her finger on the pulse of the word on the street, and should the need arise, to strangle it on the spot. If she did this correctly, she wouldn't even need to use her powers.

The only problem was, she wasn't at all sure if she cared that much if her powers _did_ become necessary. Perhaps that ambivalence should have scared her, but at the moment, unbridled rumors about sinister magic swirling about the monarchy frightened her much more. The situation was precarious, and the last thing they needed was the fear and uncertainty that came with the information vacuum Zant had imposed during his short, atrocious reign.

Instability, chaos, and mistrust would lead to death and destruction, if not organically, then by the hand of some vile plotter's grab for power. It took an effort of will to recall that the opposite extreme—totalitarian control over every detail of society—was just as bad. Mental slavery in particular was no solution, even if it removed all threat of civil unrest and violent upheaval. So what if it would be easy? So what if it would bring peace and guaranteed prosperity if every decision in the kingdom was hers alone to make? That was a dark path, no better than the unseen slavery Gannon and his minions had imposed on Hyrule's souls, and it could not be the solution to her paltry issues of image and public confidence.

Queens of Hyrule were facing problems like this, and worse, for all the known history of the kingdom. Zelda did not plan to be the first who needed to resort to overwhelming god-magic to do her job, at least so long as it wasn't necessary to level the playing field with opponents who could dish out the same.

**Central Market Plaza, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Arrika sat on Ziggy the wolf's expansive, delightful coat of fur and stared down at the churning enormity of the mind-broken masses come to prostrate themselves before the New Cult of Dio and their 'living saint' the angel-blessed herald, baptized by fire. She was invisible in her astral form, simply observing as she tried to determine the best approach to take, aware all the while of Tony's suffering, which would not end until she took back her pinion. Her proximity proved too much temptation for the amorph hiding in Ziggy's fur, which rose up every few minutes to try and satisfy its only desire—giving Arrika a physical form. Every time, Ziggy would growl viciously without otherwise moving, terrifying the mindless creature into submission.

"Oi, this isn't going to suddenly become easy, is it?" Arrika mumbled to the wolf, who gave her an appropriately sympathetic whine in reply. "The way I see it," she went on, "I can either do this the subtle way, or the dynamic way."

Ziggy made another dutiful sound of acknowledgment, then growled the amorph into submission once again.

"The subtle way has the advantage of being mercifully quick, for both me and poor Tony. Basically, I just sneak down there in astral form, claim my pinion with a touch, and the spirit is released from its mortal coil without the slightest whimper. The miracle ends, and this whole episode is forgotten when the local lord disperses these maddened zealots as the town is retaken."

This time Ziggy grunted and yawned. Arrika couldn't help but agree. She and Link owed Tony a bit more than a quick death. Still, there just wasn't any way she could imagine to repair his body, much less any chance worth mentioning that his mind would ever recover enough to let him feed himself or otherwise function as an independent human being ever again. Still...

"The dynamic way, on the other hand, is nothing but trouble." Arrika's expression soured as what she was now contemplating really began to sink in. "Basically, I suit up like a messenger from Dio, appear in a flash of brilliance, claim Tony's life with utmost dignity, and leave a new message from the Father to guide his faithful for the next thousand years. That should earn Tony a statue at least—probably even get him canonized. After all, if we can't save his life, at least we could make sure Tony's reckless heroism is honored properly."

Arrika didn't need to see Ziggy's perplexed head tilt to know that this alternative plan was fraught with potential complications. Essentially, the fact was, none of the gods, much less her own patrons, the Mother and Father of the West, ever spoke to her or gave her any guidance on any subject. Even the day she'd been endowed with their powers and stood in the incomprehensible glory of their divine presence, the only thing she'd been told was her mission to preserve existence and protect humanity, in that order. All true divine revelation had been handed down through the prophets, who'd been the kings and queens of the various First Civilizations during the Age of Genesis. And of course, all the prophets had died during the Sundering, when almost all divine presence left in the world had been used up to toss back the divos and their tools, the demons. There had been no revelations since then, at least no _genuine_ revelations.

Over the vast stretch of history, through the many worldwide disasters that had devastated civilization again and again, and in the face of charlatans and users who hungered to bend faith to their ends, religions had become perverted beyond recognition. Only the names of the gods and the images of their servants never changed, as though they were engraved immutably into the hearts of their creations. Nothing else even _resembled_ what it had begun as when Arrika was genuinely alive.  
That had really bothered Arrika once, long, long ago, and she'd tried to explain to one of her contractors that the scripture he believed, three thousand years and two cataclysms separated from when anyone knew the Age of Genesis to be a historical period rather than a mythological fog, was hugely mistaken. She'd explained to him the true history as she knew it, fragmented though it was considering that she'd spent nine-tenths of that period lost, stored in a vault, or otherwise incommunicado. Her contractor had been a charismatic man, and as he spread Arrika's revised message, he'd gained a huge and fervent following of 'true faith' zealots. That was when he was murdered by his chief apostle, Aton the Great, also known as Aton the Schismatic.

Aton had used her contractor's credibility and his own cunning to spread a new message, a message of intolerance and violence. He'd cast blame for the murder of Arrika's contractor on an southern cult that favored the Mother Goddess over Dio, linked it all to petty territorial disputes, and began the Holy War of Divorce, seeking to dominate all of the ancient lands of Romali under a theocracy lead by himself. More people died in the ten years of the War of Divorce than during the entire, centuries-long reign of the Lord of Silence, the monster who'd cursed Careda's waters and divided its lands by language and culture. Aton had failed, in no small part thanks to Arrika and the new hero she'd teamed with shortly after Aton's crime. Still, by the time it was over, there was an insurmountable gulf dividing the lands that would eventually become Careda and Ghent, and worship of the Mother and Dio were irrevocably wrenched apart.

Shockingly, that had not been the last time Arrika had spoken up on behalf of the gods she was forever doomed to represent, but nothing she did, not even a personal appearance to the public with her angelic form during the contract of a particularly strong and long-lived warrior, ever resulted in any sort of change in worship that was at all what she'd intended. After the first dozen or so misinterpretations, message co-ops by unscrupulous priests, and flat out failures, Arrika gave up. Eons later, she was jaded to the entire concept of worship. At some point, she'd noticed that no matter how the church of Dio or the Mother changed, the gross indifference of the gods to human suffering and injustice remained the same.

"I have half a mind to tell them that Dio wants them to spend every holy day wearing pants full of live maggots while gargling raw sewage." She allowed herself a half-second of malicious smirking at the thought. "The only problem is, they'd probably pervert that message into some kind of hideous human sacrifice ritual within a single century, and then I'd have another nightmare on my conscience."

Ziggy reserved commentary, flexing his massive body a few times and then scooting forward over the rooftop to look down at Tony's resting place with distinct canine concern. Arrika took the hint.

"I suppose the middle road is best," Arrika sighed, not at all looking forward to a public appearance. A mandatory manifestation, with demons on the ground and lives to save, was a joy of purpose fulfilled. What she was about to do was practically a prostitution of the special place her existence held in the hearts and minds of humanity. Only the debt she owed to Tony, and the promise she'd made to Link, allowed her to even consider it. "Well then, I might as well cloak myself with authority. Let's hope this works a little better than it ever has in the last few epochs of human history."

That said, Arrika flipped her wrist, causing her sword to appear in her phantasmal hand. With an expression of distrust, she gazed into the huge, colorless gemstone decorating the pommel, watching the milky fog churn within it as it had unceasingly since the dawn of time. Under the force of her concentration, a single, ephemeral ribbon of silver slithered out, writhed in random, spasmodic jerks for a few seconds, and then slurped back into the pommel gem like it was attached to a spring-loaded spool.

Arrika let out a string of extremely unladylike words and flung her sword at the rooftop beneath her like she was flicking water from her fingertips. The blade went through the roofing shingles and wood like it had all the substance of fog, letting the hilt strike with enough force to shatter the ceramics. The noise was swallowed up by the ambient gibbering and wailing that suffused the city, but that didn't stop Ziggy from ducking for cover at the explosion of clay chips that flung up over him.

"Okay, right, yeah, I'm sorry," Arrika made a placating gesture and hovered over to give her canine friend a hug, as much for her benefit as for his after that little shock she'd given him in her frustration. "It was so easy the other night. Having to go back to impotence after being on top of my game, even for just a little while... it sucks."

It was a rather solemn moment, only the amorph couldn't read the mood, and made another grab for Arrika. There was a series of movements too fast for the eye to follow, and when everything settled down again, Arrika's phantom was sprawled out in a depressed slump on the roof while Ziggy stood with two paws pinning the amorph down a few feet away. Although he was standing on the amorph, Ziggy was growling at Arrika.

"Yes, I'm aware that I'm stalling." Arrika's phantom vanished, reemerged from the hilt of her sword, and wrenched it free of the roof in one fluid motion. "Can you blame me?"

The growl faded to a grumbling noise, and Arrika found that she could just barely manage a smirk.

"Now, if you're so eager to get this over with, how about an assist? If I recall, that freakish personification of the Triforce gave me _carte__blanche_ to the Golden Power, so long as it doesn't hurt Link. I think it's about time we see just how much that really amounts to."

Ziggy acquiesced with a small bark of enthusiastic agreement that was still forceful enough to loosen dust from the roof shingles and send it cascading to the street below. Without waiting for Arrika to even begin puzzling out how the process of a truly large-scale power loan might begin, he powered forward through her phantom and came out the other side with Arrika's blade clutched in his massive jaws. Before she could get a word in edgewise, brilliant golden light suffused Arrika's sword, covering it with a halo of magnificent luminescence. As the glow entered the sword, the aura of supernatural vitality that was the trademark feature rendering Ziggy monstrous ebbed away, so much so that he somehow no longer seemed all that freakishly huge once it had completely vanished, despite the fact that his physical size was identical.

Ziggy, now looking less like an embodiment of everything mankind feared in the ferocity of violent nature and more like a predator with a pituitary defect, offered Arrika her sword. She took it, and he slumped down into a canine lounge, looking pained and ill, but giving her a positive expression.

"Good Ziggy, very good," Arrika took up her newly imbued blade and gave it an experimental swing. Other than a palette swap from silver and white to gold and silver, she couldn't detect any difference. "Here goes nothing," she muttered, and concentrated on the pommel jewel of her sword once again.

This new attempt started out quite promising, with a half-dozen ribbons of gold spilling out of her sword's gemstones and wrapping up her phantasmal body. And yet, it went bad almost immediately, as the ribbons weren't enough to cover even half of her tiny, girl-child form. When they solidified into her larger, adult manifestation, Arrika's disappointment was so crushing that all the vile, delightful, elegant, and obscene swearwords of all her many languages abandoned her all at once.

"Nuts," Arrika said, as she looked down and found only a tiny fraction of the magnificent angelic body that had come to her call the night before. There was her right arm and forearm up to the elbow, about seventy percent of her face, shoulders, and chest sliced off at a descending angle, and a ragged assortment of torso and leg distributed unevenly down to her oddly complete boots. The fragments of her that had manifested properly were suspended firmly and correctly in space in their natural anatomical arrangement, so that it looked a great deal like someone had taken invisibility potion and painted it onto her in wide, maddened stripes.

"This is way less than a third of the power I got last night, and that was _way_ less a third of what that beastly Golden Power had to toss around," Arrika grumbled, numbed by anticlimax. "This won't do at all." As though to emphasize this fact, she took her sword in her disembodied forearm and passed it effortlessly through the vacuous chasm where her abdomen was supposed to be. She then took an experimental series of large steps, finding that all of her disparate pieces moved as though they were connected by a complete body. "Actually, if my goal was to shatter what shreds of sanity this city has left, this form would do quite nicely. Any ideas?"

Ziggy made a pained whining noise and rolled his head listlessly from one side to the other. Arrika might have been concerned by this, if she hadn't been seized at that exact moment by paralyzing agony. She managed to get her poorly-formed throat to make a single, incoherent sound, "Ungh!" before she exploded into a cloud of ribbons, those ribbons slurped into her sword's gemstones like a devil fish into its lair, and the sword itself was knocked from her phantasmal grip to rattle down the slanted tile roof and off into space on its way to the crowd below.

Arrika flipped her wrist, and the sword was instantly held in her non-corporeal hand once again.

"Well, that was a close one. But what the heck am I supposed to do now?" She asked Ziggy. She turned to see if he was feeling any better, and came face-to-blob with the amorph. Without Ziggy to keep it in line, it rose up like a vast mouth and swallowed Arrika's phantom, sword and all, collapsing onto it and bearing her to the rooftop in a sprawl. It was a boiling mound of goo for many seconds, then rose up to little-girl height and solidified all at once.

"Crap!" Arrika peeped out another understated curse as she found herself perched barefoot on the peak of a roof. She had barely gotten walking down and now she was suddenly learning narrow-base balance and the thrill of terror and vertigo involved in looking down off of high places. She failed this pop quiz terribly, but fortunately managed to fall square on her bony ass rather than tumbling off the roof. The impact on her bum was enough to bring a whole new string of swearwords suddenly back to the forefront of her memory, but at least she didn't have to learn if the Amorph could emulate the sensation of multiple compound fractures and emulsified internal organs.

"Oi, Ziggy, a little help here?" Arrika groaned, once she could think of something other than her bruised tailbone. She turned where she sat to find the great wolf unmoved from its previous slump, its eyes open but vacant. She immediately looked to her sword and found it to be just as spectacularly golden as it had been moments before. "Right, get the spirit wolf his powers back..."

Arrika, shifting randomly between the terror of her precarious balance straddling the rooftop and the fresh agony of the ceramic tiles abrading her be-stockinged legs, took exactly one hesitant scoot toward Ziggy before she had to cling to the rooftop for dear life.

"Okay, remain calm." Arrika was definitely talking to herself now, rather than earlier, when she'd been talking to herself by pretending to talk to her dog. "You're trapped in a sleeve of flesh, and that flesh is terrified of heights. This wouldn't be much of a problem, except you're _also_ trapped on a rooftop above a fall that, while probably not fatal to your fake goo-body, would certainly warrant enough pain that you would probably _wish_ you could die afterward. Ideas?"

She bit off further terrified blithering and thought furiously for several long minutes. At length, the morning sun caught on her golden blade and stung her eyes. She winced, and then her eyes snapped open wide in revelation.

"That could work..."

**Deep Within Link's Home**

Link was Wet. In fact, in the unknown length of time since Arrika's adorable rain cloak memory had evaporated under the concentrated strain of this psychic trauma storm, possibly only _minutes _for all he really knew, he'd become more wet than he could ever remember being while not completely submerged in water. Not that he was having much success remembering things at the moment. Arrika's prediction had more or less come true, and though he was soaked to the bone, Link couldn't think of why he should mind. For that matter, he couldn't particularly recall where he was going, or where he'd come from, or bring himself to care overmuch about his inability to generate coherent thoughts.

At the moment, Link was picking his nose with his little finger and trying, albeit not all that hard, to think of what he should be doing. The rain was falling so hard and heavy that Link was actually having a bit of trouble standing, as though it were a waterfall pounding his shoulders rather than a downpour, and the drenching force of it was enough to make breathing difficult and visibility almost nothing. All around him, what had once been a grassy dreamland was now a floodplain in its full glory, enormous rivers of rainwater seething through chest-high grasses to become mud flows that rushed like quicksilver glaciers through the lowlands between the rolling hills. In this unnatural place, there was nowhere for the water to go, and it rose steadily as the hills were washed into the muddy rivers. Soon enough, what had once been a verdant plain would become nothing but a featureless, storm-tossed sea.

Link discovered a delightfully large and gooey nugget in the recesses of his sinuses and carefully pulled it out to admire it, chuckling mindlessly all the while. When it was instantly washed away, he was disappointed for about three seconds before he forget what he'd been doing, again. Puzzled, he turned slowly in a circle, examining the rainy horizon as though he would discover his purpose in the gray, featureless skies of this Armageddon flood. Then, he forgot himself again and began to spin in place, just for the hell of it. It was while he was delighting in the sensation of dizziness that he saw the light in the sky.

The flash lit one entire horizon, and Link's first instinct was to brace himself for a thunderclap. When there was no thunder, he realized that the light was not fading, and was also somewhat pink. The source of it screamed across the boiling, stormy heavens like a comet and came to earth just beyond the horizon, shining like a beacon. Suddenly, Link's storm-addled brain could form no thought other than an intense and honest desire to see such a pretty light up close. Without his inhibited consciousness to hold him back, Link performed a perfect psionic manipulation of the 'reality' of his Home itself. The desire became the new 'reality' and Link was instantly standing on a new grassy hilltop over completely different rushing mudslides and flood waters. The only difference was that now he was within two hundred feet of the source of the brilliant pink light. Like a bemused child at a fireworks show, Link plopped down on a grassy embankment that was mere minutes from being washed away and stared into the light.

Two hundred feet away, the pink comet had come to rest upon a hill somewhat larger than any other in sight, but that would have been hard-pressed to dominate the landscape of Link's Home. The light quickly coalesced into the shining silhouette of a person, and then faded suddenly to nothing, leaving a cloaked person who exactly fit that silhouette standing in its stead. This person endured the driving rain for half a moment, and then a dainty, silver-clad hand emerged from the darkness of the fully-concealing cloak and made an encouraging gesture at the thin air.

A new figure emerged from nothing as smoothly as if it had stepped from behind a curtain, and now there was an enormous, white-haired warrior woman riding an enormous, white, thoroughbred warhorse with a tiny, white-robed child clinging behind her. Link's eyes crossed as he tried to imagine what the purpose of this newcomer could be, at least until his addled brain registered that this horsewoman and her juvenile charge had been accompanied by a huge, spreading tree that was now shielding the cloaked stranger from the rain quite completely.

'In a psychic storm like this, you need to manifest something to anchor your mind,' someone had told Link recently, although he could not quite recall who it might have been. This, then, was the stranger's version of a duckie-covered rain cloak. Their insubstantial, unreal nature became all too clear when the stranger began striding to the top of her hill and the horsewoman and tree followed, keeping their exact spatial, rain-blocking relationship to the stranger and each other _without moving in the slightest_. It was as though the newcomer was dragging the image around on an invisible, wheeled cart like a personal bubble of sanity in the blistering storm.

The entire display served as little more than delightful amusement to Link, although it left him with a nagging feeling that he'd forgotten something. Nevertheless, his sodden consciousness wanted to see more, and that desire became another revision of local space. Now he was less than twenty feet away from the invader, chest-down in the grass. He observed unseen, possessed of the sort of glee usually reserved for children who expect a wonderful gift at any moment.

The stranger came to the top of the hill and stopped by an unremarkable stone. Except, the stranger stooped down and drew a symbol upon it with one slender finger, and it wasn't an ordinary stone anymore. Now it was a pedestal covered in glyphs, and the stranger wasted no time before touching the glyphs in a particular order. With all the subtlety of a volcanic eruption, a modest, fifteen-foot step pyramid of slate-colored marble burst up out of the rain-rotted grasses and crowned the hill. At its top, a golden light poured forth like the sunrise, its heat reaching into the heavens to stab into the clouds, which instantly parted in a swirling vortex to expose blue skies. For roughly a half mile in every direction, the rain-devastated landscape was pummeled by hot winds. When the disturbance was over, a mile-wide circle of Link's home was perfect again, green grasses swaying peacefully, kissed by the sun, and blessedly, inexplicably dry.

Link was dry too, and suddenly, catastrophically in possession of his senses.

"Who's there?" the stranger turned on her heel and found Link's hiding place as though she could see straight through the grass. It was a woman by her voice, and she waved a small hand at him, sending out a pulse of force that parted the sea of green and formed a path from her to Link, exposing him. Still not even _close_ to having any idea where he was, how he got here, or what was going on, Link froze like a startled deer.

"Hero?" the stranger seemed to recognize Link immediately. She then smiled a wide, deeply expressive smile, and Link felt a chill he could not understand. "No, you can't be his ego," She went on, her smile creasing into a more neutral expression only with difficulty. "he'd never have found me in this storm—not with that tramp of the westerly gods swaddling him. I thought I sensed his consciousness... but you must be some kind of subconscious fragment. Well, no matter. I have work to attend."

The stranger went from startled to dismissive with a wave of her hand. Link felt a mild tingle, but no further effect. And yet, he still hadn't managed to unfreeze his body or clear off his expression of slack-jawed bewilderment. Apparently, that was exactly the sign this visitor was looking for, and she turned toward the pyramid, not sparing Link even the briefest of backward glances.

Saved by his own intense surprise, Link finally had a chance to collect his thoughts. It didn't take much of a mental leap to recognize that the golden light which had obliterated the storm in the local area was probably the Triforce he'd been seeking. What he could not wrap his mind around was this unexpected intruder, especially considering that she seemed to be familiar with him, and _particularly_ because—and this was the real kicker—_she_ seemed somehow familiar to _him_, too. He was still trying to clear out the fog left by his prolonged bath in the psychic trauma storm, and now he had to deal with a situation he never could have imagined, not to mention the fact that he'd somehow found the objective he'd secretly hoped would eternally elude him.

Link's indecisive fugue ended when he finally took the time to glance over his shoulder. In the distance, he could just barely see the border between this guarded zone and the flood beyond, which had succeeded in its ongoing ambition of turning his grassland Home into a vast lake. The water was held back by invisible barriers that transformed the area around the pyramid into some kind of backward aquarium, and promised to make any sort of escape extremely difficult. There was nothing to do but either go forward or stay where he was, and standing still was so inherently contrary to his nature that even facing the Triforce seemed preferable.

Link scaled the dwarf pyramid less like a man condemned and more like a man reaching his hand into a dank hole—he expected to encounter either something nightmarish or something with venomous fangs at any moment, and wasn't eager for either fate. That said, what he discovered at the top was so anticlimactic that he was almost disappointed. There was another pedestal at the center of the step pyramid's flat top, and this one bore a golden triangle no larger than a tea saucer. Even its golden glow, which from the pyramid's base some ten feet below had seemed to shame this place's hazy sun in terms of pure radiance, was from this distance little more than the flickering of a modest bonfire. The mysterious cloaked woman stood a few feet from the Triforce, still cloaked, still mysterious, but clearly staring at the bit of gold with palpable intensity.

"I just don't understand!" she shouted without warning, prompting Link to duck, and then realize too late that there was no cover behind which to hide up here. It was meaningless, anyway, since it shortly became obvious that the woman was talking to herself. "It doesn't look any different than it ever has... I can't sense anything from it that I haven't sensed during the service of Heroes beyond numbering... so _why_ is this _happening? _First, I find out that there is suddenly a fourth layer of alteration that I've never even heard of, now... that entity that arose from their combined powers... hmph."

The woman's eccentric monologue was so shockingly on-topic for everything that Link wanted to know more about that he almost failed to notice how insane she sounded as she raved her thoughts out loud. He dithered for a moment, stuck halfway between wanting to wait and listen for more tidbits of information and wanting to capture her for close questioning. As it turned out, she made the decision for him when she reached out to claim the Triforce with a hand clad up to the elbow in an elegant silver glove. Before he even fully realized what he was doing, Link sprang across the few feet separating them and bundled the lady into a fairly gentle submission hold that pinned one arm behind her back and the other in the crook of his massive bicep. She made an appropriately effeminate noise of shock and outrage, then craned her head to find Link giving her a deadly cold stare.

"You _are_ his ego!" the woman shouted, sounding annoyed and embarrassed at her mistake. But really, her surprise rang a little hollow, not that Link had time to think about it. "I really must be getting old!" She turned her head away and frowned, considering her situation furiously and for once not voicing those thoughts. She seemed supremely unconcerned about her uncomfortable position, at least until Link's thoughts caught up with his reflexes, and he realized just how familiar was the face he'd just gotten such a close look at.

"Zelda?" He asked. His muscles spasmed as he was rocked by confusion, tightening his submission hold past the point of agony and regaining the attention of the petite woman pretzled into his embrace. She shouted for half a second of discomfort and then abruptly vanished into a cloud of sparkling green mist, appearing ten feet away in a crouch as she nursed her aching shoulder joints. In the time that took, Link noted the age lines around this woman's eyes and lips, the gravitas of her fully matured body, and the particular undertone of gold to her single, blond braid. "You're _not_ Zelda," he finally decided, "which raises an interesting question or two. Let's start with: who are you and what are you doing in my Home?"

"This is no good, I'm not _ready_ to talk with the Hero." The beautiful woman of indeterminate middle age ignored Link completely. She didn't even look at him as she pulled herself to her feet and brushed dirt from her traveler's robe. Link felt his eyebrows rise in puzzlement as she continued to monologue. There was a note in her tone of recitation, but Link missed it completely. "Stupid, stupid, _stupid!_ You just _had_ to sneak in for a good look at Courage, didn't you? Never mind that the Hero is the one mortal alive in any given era that your powers won't work on. Now we'll just have to leave—what a waste of time!"

"You're not going anywhere until you answer my questions!" Link struck with a speed the eye could not follow, catching the stranger's silver gloved hand by the wrist before he was done saying 'you're.' The woman that could have been Princess Zelda's mother, elder sister, or given a few years, her twin, stared imperiously down her nose at the annoyance that had once more interjected to derail her outspoken thought process.

"I think not," she said, and pulled away from Link's vice-like grip. The silver glove slipped between Link's fingers as though it were empty and coated in grease, but looked perfectly normal when the woman used it to cover her sneer of dissatisfaction a moment later. Link spent a moment staring at his hand, making sure it was still as solid as he remembered it, and then gazed at this intruder with renewed respect. "You may have lucked into surprising me during this admittedly ill-advised little intrusion, but I'll not be answering any of your questions. You aren't ready to know."

"What-?" Link began, but he was too late. Before he could say another word, the intruder was already thirty feet away and climbing into the sky, transformed back into a brilliant pink comet. For a moment, all Link could do was stand dumbstruck by the sheer gall of the woman. Who breaks into a person's innermost consciousness, teases with tantalizing hints at the answers to all her host's deepest questions, and then flees the moment she's caught red-handed? Then, the injustice of it, the disgusting arrogance of the woman who'd violated his spiritual sanctum, and his long-held fury at the unseen forces that ruled his existence all came to a blistering, boiling, furious head of pure rage.

"STOP!" Link shouted, and put everything he had into the words. He felt the world ripple with change at some fundamental level, and there was a sudden, startlingly loud clang of impact from overhead. In the sky, a massive, free-floating replica of a high-quality Hylian shield had appeared directly in the path of the pink comet as it screamed away from the ground. The clang was the sound of the comet striking its surface and careening off with bone-crushing force. Link barely had time to realize that he'd _caused that to happen_ before the ground rocked with impact. Some twenty feet from the base of the Triforce-bearing stone plinth, the intruder now lay in the center of a small crater of crushed-down grass.

When the woman that looked like Hylian Royalty scraped herself out of the dirt, Link was standing over her at the edge of her crater. She glowered at him, and then curtsied with perfect etiquette, somehow managing to make it into a taunt rather than a courtesy. Indeed, mostly what the motion did was prove her total lack of any injury after suffering two impacts that literally shook this phantom world.

"You seem to have above-average willpower for a Hero," the woman acknowledged Link's feat in blocking her passage. "However, do not imagine that you can keep me here indefinitely. This may be be your Home, but it is a battlefield that I am trained for as you so clearly are not."

"I'm sure you can do all sorts of things in this world that I can't even imagine," Link gave her a small commoner's bow from the waist, but hadn't the practice to imbue it with any particular insult. "But I don't have to keep you here forever—and hell, I don't want you here, anyway. I just have to be obnoxious enough that giving me some answers looks like a better route to escape than trying to muscle past me." He gave her a predator's smile. "Unless, of course, keeping me in the dark is more important than whatever a drag-out battle with my 'willpower' costs you besides time."

"Time," she smirked right back at him, not even slightly perturbed by his posturing, "is something I have in abundance beyond description." Her smirk faded. "In fact, I shouldn't think that I would need much. You caught me off guard. If I really wished to leave, there is nothing a novice could do to stop me. Yet, the effort you would doubtlessly make to impede me would certainly leave your mind even more damaged than it already is. What shall we do about this?"

Her words rang with an unmistakeable air of added meaning. She was trying to clue Link in on something, but what exactly it might be...

It dawned on Link rather suddenly that he was now engaged in a truly unfamiliar battle—that is to say, one of wits. So far, this woman had revealed two important facts: earlier, in the apparent grips of insanity, she'd mentioned that her powers didn't work on him, and just now, she'd admitted that she had no interest in injuring him. She'd also said something else... but why had she said that, and why that hinting tone? She had invaded his mind, so she was an enemy, right?

But _was_ she? And was she really as crazy as she'd sounded earlier? Looking at her now, she seemed sharper than Arrika's sword. What's more, there was something about her... Link couldn't quantify it, but he could tell that pure confrontation probably wasn't his best approach. It was the weirdest experience he'd had in months, but suddenly, for the first time in his life, when confronted by an adversary, he felt like trying to negotiate.

"Okay, so you don't want to answer any questions," Link began, "but you don't _seem_ like an enemy, despite such careless trespassing. Tell me, why is it that I'm 'not ready to know' what you can tell me? If you can explain that much to me,_ to my satisfaction_, then I'll relent. You can go on your way, and I'll start working on becoming 'ready.'"

"HA!" The Hylian woman suddenly broke into a brilliant smile, shedding the semblance of twenty years in an instant to appear as gorgeous as the monarch Link had left in Hyrule. "Unbelievable! I do everything in my power to provoke you short of physical violence or threatening a third party, and _still_ you've read me!" she said, her tone thick with humor as she spoke her cryptic phrases. "If you'd tried again to force my cooperation, I'd have crushed you. You must have sensed that, even cut off from the physical world where your power is greatest. Now you're negotiating, and how should I respond to that?"

"Um.. favorably?" Link's quip washed right over her, but negotiating seemed to be working, so Link let some of the tension out of his body and tried to concentrate on detecting any attempt at deception. The trouble was, now that she was smiling, she didn't seem old anymore. She didn't _look_ old anymore. She looked beautiful, and much like Arrika earlier, that was having an effect to which he wasn't at all accustomed. What the hell was it about being within his Home that made female curves and lips and breathless sighs so _distracting?_

"Hmm," the woman didn't seem to notice his distraction as she was lost in some world of contemplation far away. "Very well then," she eventually nodded, "There seems to be some merit in you after all. You're correct: I'm _not_ your enemy. For now, I'll have to ask you to take my word for it, but I think the fact that this conversation is happening should be a fair sign of my good faith."

Link nodded. Stopping her escape had been an accident, but accomplishing it had hurt like dozens of points on his skin were being yanked in all directions at once. He didn't dare underestimate what she might be able to do on a battlefield like this.

"If you can accept that I am not your enemy," she went on, all coy from head to toe, "then you have already done more than I expected of The Hero. Next, I want you to think very carefully and answer me this: why am I,"she held a hand to her chest for emphasis, "here?"

"What?" Link was boggled, and not only because he'd spent more attention on the way her lips were moving than to what she'd been saying. _"That's_ your first question to test my quality? I mean, I caught you red-handed investigating something or other about the Triforce I'm bonded with. You even narrated _out loud_ what you were looking for!"

"Is that your answer then?" Her smile didn't budge.

Link was about to confirm it when some sudden instinct told him to wait. Something had been off about this entire encounter from the very beginning, and the aggregate of all the little things he noticed finally rose up and kicked him in the back of the brain.

"Er, could I go check something out real quick?" Link finally got past the distraction of the woman's incredible eyes and started to really think about this situation.

"Looking before you leap? My, perhaps you are closer to being ready than I guessed. Please, take your time. Consider your answer carefully. I'll wait." Once again, any hint of insanity was wiped away as the woman considered him with open amusement and now the slightest edge of deeper interest. The change in her physical appearance that had begun when she first smiled at him was now complete, and she looked for all the world like Princess Zelda's elder sister. And not very elder, either.

Link nodded, backed away cautiously, and quickly climbed the small pyramid. At the top, the insignificant-looking golden triangle sat undisturbed. He'd gotten so distracted by the intruder that he'd forgotten that the very thing he'd been searching for was just sitting up here waiting for him. Only now, looking at it with a critical eye, Link realized just what had been nagging at the back of his mind. The little triangle of golden light didn't frighten him at all. It had no aura of majesty or mysticism whatsoever. Indeed, as far as he could tell, it was just a glowing hunk of shiny metal. He was so thoroughly underwhelmed that he did something he otherwise never even would have considered after the fiasco at the Battle of White Plains Red: he reached out and grabbed it.

Down at the foot of the pyramid again, Link held up the little triangle of metal before the intruder and flipped it through his knuckles like he was juggling a gold coin, gripping it between two knuckles before flipping it deftly to be gripped by the next two, shuttling it nimbly up and down the face of his fist. The woman tilted her head slightly to one side, and still her grin did not change one iota.

"The Triforce?" Link posited, skeptical to the say the least. Down here it didn't even glow, pretty much completely dispelling any resemblance it bore to the great artifact beyond the totally superficial. Link caught the triangle between his first three fingers and easily bent the soft gold over his middle knuckle. "_Not_ the Triforce."

"Oh, my," the woman covered her widening grin with her silver-gloved hand. "Well spotted."

"So, if that's _not_ the Triforce," Link began thinking out loud, trying to read some reaction from the trespasser, "then that means you _weren't_ actually examining it earlier. I doubt you could get _here_ without being able to tell a real from a fake. So if you weren't investigating the Triforce..." it all came together at once in his thoughts, and his eyebrows rose, "then you must have been investigating _me_."

Suddenly it all made sense! She'd been toying with him from the beginning. Likely, this whole encounter had been a test from the start_,_ even before he'd seen the pink star fall from the sky. After all, if she'd come and he wasn't out defying his own injured mind to search for his greatest fear, that'd be a good first indicator that he wasn't ready to learn about the Triforce. She'd had her chance now to see him react under pressure to unexpected circumstances, to adapt to a rapidly-changing situation with any number of unknown variables, and to evaluate an adversary on the fly. As his mouth set into a rather grim line, he at least had the relief to know that he'd acquitted himself fairly well, at least by his own standards. Now if only he could figure out the point behind her pretending to be crazy... assuming it _was_ an act. Personally, Link was still on the fence.

"Are you sure?" She asked, using exactly the same tone she had before. Link cursed the woman for trying to make him second-guess himself, and then invested in his own reasoning with a simple nod.

"Oh, _very good_. Very good _indeed,_ Hero," she seemed quite pleased as she confirmed his success. "You should be proud to know that you are the first Hero I've ever had cause to personally evaluate who has perceived the deception on the very first try. You see, Courage prefers hosts whose nature predisposes them to look no deeper than the surface. It provides you and your ilk with the strength of purity of purpose. That purity is not as powerful as the complexity of a mind that comprehends the many layers of meaning in all situations, but it is easier to achieve without the constant shattering and reforging of the psyche in the crucible of hard life."

"So, do you answer my questions now, or do I have to puzzle some meaning out of these vague rants you seem to enjoy so much?" It was Link's turn to smile, although his was closer to a snarl. Apparently, he'd passed her test. Or at least one of them. Great. Now he'd very much like to know who this familiar-seeming woman was and why the _hell_ she'd felt the need to go through this elaborate ruse.

"Alas, there is another test," she answered, and gave an apologetic shrug when Link cursed and rolled his eyes. "It is _important,_ however. You've shown the fundamental dedication, the base wit, and the capacity for looking past the obvious that you will need, and that's very good. You also must demonstrate the strength of mind that what I can teach will demand."

"Strength of mind?" Link glanced over his shoulder. A distant, invisible wall held back the ocean that had once been his peaceful meadow. "If you hadn't noticed, my mind isn't in the best shape right now."

"_Indeed,"_ she was inscrutable as she measured him carefully, his irritation washing over her with no visible impact. "That is very true. And yet, neither of us has any real interest in waiting for you to recover. Fortunately, I think we can evaluate your strength of mind in a manner that more than compensates for _that_," she nodded at the ocean. "The measurement can take practically any form, and under the circumstances, I think the most educational test of all would be a _duel."_ She actually began to smirk a bit again as she continued, "Who knows what we might learn?"

"A duel?" Link tried not to let his amusement show, but failed. "A _duel_ will test my strength of mind and will?"

"Indeed, in this place, strength of arms should be determined by strength of mind as much as it is by training and experience. A duel should be the perfect test."

"Is this another trick?" Link kept expecting her to shout 'psyche' and ask him to do math or something. The situation was becoming increasingly surreal, and that was saying something considering he had started out this journey in a visual manifestation of his subconscious during a storm that represented psychic damage caused by his battle with a greater demon. And yet, unlike before, the stranger now seemed as totally serious and on-the-level as anyone Link had ever dealt with. What then, was the lie? The babbling madwoman, or this ice-cold, calculating creature?

The intruder responded to his rude skepticism by giving him a cryptic shrug. "What is a trick?" she asked him. "If it tests the parameters I need tested, do you really care what of the tasks I demand are the true factors I am accounting? A duel is the test I offer. Take it as you will. In the end, we shall see if you are ready to learn of the Triforce."

"I... can't really argue with that," Link conceded, sounding almost surprised. She was testing him, had been testing him all along. Some part of a duel here would test his strength of mind. If that was what it would take, then... "But who exactly will I be dueling?"

"_Me_, obviously," she replied, and it was so matter-of-fact that it took a moment for what she'd actually said to register.

"Whoa! Whoa, whoa, _whoa!_ That's not happening!" Link crossed his arms and set his jaw. "There's just no way I can duel with a girl," _much less the princess_, he did not add, "and what would such a duel even prove, anyway? My talent for beating up women?"

"Hmph," the invader rolled her eyes extensively. "Some things never change. But very well. I suppose it wouldn't do for you to hold back in what is meant to be an earnest test. I shall have a champion."

Without a pause, she touched her ungloved hand to her forehead. She seemed to collect some kind of energy there, and when she'd gathered enough, she pointed at the ground between her and Link. A circle of light appeared on the grass, and within that circle, slowly materializing from foot to head, a human figure took shape.

It was a small figure, very slender, but wired with tight musculature. He was wrapped from head to toe in skin-tight blue armor of some unknown leather that clung close, but didn't seem to crush or chafe around the joints, and which coated him completely without any sign of a seam or stitch mark. Over that second skin he wore the tattered remnants of a white tabard bearing the device of the Hylian royal family, cloth-wrapped bracers, and greaves plated with a mysterious blue metal. His features were hidden in a white turban that also wrapped around his face, revealing nothing but long Hylian ears, a few wisps of golden hair, and a single, strikingly beautiful eye.

"This is Sheik," the intruder said, "He was once a full-fledged knight of the secret order of the Sheikah tribe. I trust _he_ will meet your exacting standard in opponents?"

"I suppose," Link frowned.

"I see, further problems then_?"_ her expression lacked any particular concern.

"It's just, I now know this joker's name, but I still don't know _yours_. You seem to know me really well. Now tell me, is that fair?"

"_Please_," the woman didn't bother to hide her amusement, "I really think you can _guess_ my name. In any case, if you can prove yourself, _ask_, and I'll answer most any question you like. In the meantime, if you must call me something, 'Traveler' is a name I have often been called."

"Right," Link's expression soured. His dislike for this woman grew the more they spoke, and had long since eclipsed his appreciation for her beauty. He covered his frustration by changing the subject back to business. "Well, are there any rules for this 'duel?'"

Link turned and started to size up 'Sheik.' He was wiry and whip-taut, which probably meant he was quick and limber. The set to his shoulders and his general carriage were enough to shout quite clearly that he was trained to the razor's edge. Simply looking at him, Link could tell that he'd rarely met a more dangerous fellow.

"There will be a game of... shall we say, _five_ points." The Traveler made a great show of thinking carefully as she made up the rules on the spot. "You will fight until one of you has struck a mortal blow upon the other. The first combatant to suffer a life-threatening injury will lose the round, the winner gains a point."

"Wait a second!" Link's brow furrowed as those terms hit his brain. "The two of us are going to duel to the death _how_ many times?"

"You can't die from combat wounds in your _mind,"_ the Traveler answered, as patient as if she were explaining it to a small child. "And you shall be restored between rounds besides. So, do you agree to those terms, or do you wish to pursue the matter of the Triforce further on your own?"

Link's heart seized up in his chest and kicked him in the throat at the mere suggestion. Investigating the Triforce on his own was so far from what he wanted to do that he was standing here taking tests from a complete stranger who he had every reason to distrust. To say that he was prepared to grasp at straws for help here in the veritable eleventh hour of his search for insight into the divine Golden Power was a rather irresponsible understatement.

"Right, let's do this." There was less certainty in that statement than he would have liked.

Link took another look at Sheik. He had to assume that the Sheikah knight was nothing more than a memory manifesting from this intruder's experiences. Hopefully, that meant he wouldn't hesitate when it came time to strike a lethal blow. Strength of will huh? And she'd meant to test his by having him strike her down in mortal combat? Killing this stranger wouldn't be much better—killing all but the most vile humans was never easy—but at least there wasn't a hauntingly familiar face to watch as it went shocked and then slack in death.

"You know, on the other hand, could you tell me a bit more about this 'you will be restored' business before we-"

"Here," the Traveler held out her ungloved hand. A flickering, translucent red ball appeared and hovered above her fingers. She pointed gently toward Link and the ball zipped silently over and stopped near his chest.

"What-" Link began, and then saw her mean grin.

Then there was an explosion, heat, pain, sudden riotous motion. Link was tossed like a ragdoll, agony flooded out all other senses as the world spiraled uncontrollably. Shock stabbed into his brain like needles of ice that spread out to dead numbness, but he had one last image burned into his mind before the world went dark. It was the bloody stumps of an arm and leg lying several feet away. His final thought was of how familiar they looked.

And then he was alive, whole, and screaming. He couldn't do anything but vent his lungs in horror for a full ten seconds, his face cramped into a rictus of near-madness. When he finally bit off the scream, it still took another few seconds of heavy breathing and limb-counting before he was calm enough to speak. Even then, he summed up all he felt with a glare of poniards at the woman with Zelda's face, but obviously not her grace.

"What can I say?" the Traveler had a pleased expression totally at odds with the situation, "I have a lot of unresolved frustrations against men with your face. You have _no idea_ how good it feels to let loose after maintaining civility for so long."

"You'll be answering _so many_ questions," Link growled. "On the bright side, I'm suddenly in the mood to kill someone," Link flexed his new body. The pieces of the old one were still lying in the grass nearby, slowly dissolving into a cloud of light and fading away. He took a look at Sheik, who hadn't budged. "Do we get weapons, or should I just beat this guy to death?"

"Try to remember where you are," the Traveler replied, her amusement faded again to clam neutrality, "You have access to absolutely everything from your memory. Use it. Sheik will."

"But _how?"_ Link didn't wait for an answer, but tried to concentrate. _Sword,_ he thought _Bow.__Boomerang. Clawshot. Come on, anything!_ But nothing came to his call. Meanwhile, the Zelda lookalike was walking away, giving them room. She eventually turned back toward them and raised her arm.

"No more delays. Either you are strong enough to face up to me and my champion or you are not yet strong enough to even _imagine_ reigning in the Triforce and bringing the power of a God to heel." She swept her arm downward. "Begin!"

Every other thought scattered from Link's mind. He turned and set his feet, his muscles bunched for action, and then a flicker of motion caught his eye. He was rolling before he could think, a whistle passed just under his ear and a flash of heat brushed his throat as he hit the ground and sprang back up in a crouch, and then he was off. Two huge, leaping steps later he had almost closed on the slight warrior. Then his body lost all coordination and he collapsed to his knees. He tried to reach out and grab Sheik, but his arms wouldn't respond. He felt tired and wet all down his body.

"Neck slashed by throwing knife," the Traveler's voice came from somewhere far away as black edged in on all sides of Link's vision. "That would be death from blood loss in minutes. Sheik takes the first point."

Link was restored a moment later. He took a deep breath and settled himself. A glance over to where his previous body was dissolving showed a trail of metal strewn across the ground in a distinctive net pattern. The metal was a brace of throwing knives, wickedly sharp, triangular blades with weighted cores and stubby hilts. Not only had Sheik thrown six of them at once in a precise pattern designed to herd him into a roll, but they'd been thrown so hard that they'd moved faster than the eye could follow and were stuck more than two-thirds of the way into the ground.

Once Sheik had seen where he'd chosen to dodge, one of the only three directions left open by his first attack, he'd thrown another knife on an intercept course. To hit a moving target like that, and to do it with such force and precision that the blade had struck a lethal gash without Link even noticing until he was wearing his internal fluids on his shirt...

Suddenly, Link's hand started to shake. His guts began to churn and his palms became sweaty. His head felt light, and he couldn't seem to catch his breath. It was incredibly unpleasant.

"What the hell, was the knife poisoned?" Link asked, trying to stop the tremors in his hands by gripping them together. "What's happening?"

"It's called fear," the Traveler spoke, and her tone was weighted down by some deep hurt. "And not the abstract apprehension you might feel about an uncertain future. No, that's the ice-cold terror that comes from dreading impending suffering or death. I'm not surprised that its an unfamiliar part of combat for you, but I think you'll find that fighting here is far different from fighting in the real world. In essence, you haven't got the Triforce here to coddle you."

"What—how—?" Link gripped his arms to his chest and squeezed until he stopped shaking, then fought his breathing back down to a regular speed. "What do you mean by that?"

"Okay then," the false Zelda's face was a cloud of remembered hurt, "I'll give you a few free answers, if only because nobody deserves to face what you have in complete ignorance." She spent a moment lost in reminiscence. "Did you know that your body was being changed by the Triforce?"

"I..." Link paused. There had been that conversation with Arrika in the warehouse in Careda while he pried an arrow out of his heart region and wound up very little worse for wear. "It was beginning to become pretty obvious."

"Well, those changes aren't in effect here on the astral plane. It would be different if you bore the Triforce of Wisdom—all its power translates to this place because it fundamentally alters the mind on a spiritual level at the same time as the physical level. For you, however, the changes are only flesh-deep, and your ego is free of Triforce interference as soon as it is free from the body. Congratulations." Somehow she managed to sound envious and piteous at the same time.

"Well," Link could tell when a verbal prompt was needed, and supplied, "what are these changes anyway? I've noticed a few things but..."

"I thought you'd never ask," the Traveler grew a mean smile akin to the one she'd borne when she blew him up, and it looked no more natural on those features than it had before. "The alterations to your body that make you into a combat beast unmatched by any mortal man are the effect of the third Layer of the Triforce of Courage. The first and second layers wrought their subtle changes upon you long ago, before you ever picked up a sword. The first layer enhanced your natural capacity for karnak, so that you could strike at the vitals of beasts large and small with impunity and gain enormous vitality from felling giant monsters. The second layer though is _by far_ the most insidious. It makes you _brave_."

"That hasn't been so very bad," Link immediately replied. If this mess that made his bowels water was the alternative, an unhealthy fixation on throwing himself at giant monsters suddenly didn't seem so awful anymore.

"HA! The Hero speaks with the same words as all before him!" The bitterness in that strange accusation was so palpable that it actually made Link's chest hurt, and so different from the character she'd displayed thus far that it caught him completely off guard. Although she didn't seem to age, the weight of years was once again gathered around her eyes and shoulders. "No, young Hero, it's not the _result_ that is so dreadful, but the _way it comes about_. You see, the only way to get a human mind to react to deadly danger with glee rather than natural terror is to change the way the brain functions. The details are beyond your knowing, but it can be summed up by saying that it takes the way you react to certain 'positive stimuli' and changes you until you react to _combat_ that way _instead._"

"I don't think I..." Link began, but the truth was, he knew what she meant right away. He shook his head in brief denial, but she didn't let up for a second.

"When was the last time, back in the real world, that you looked at a beautiful woman and felt your body flush with heated desire?" Her mean glee was at its peak. "What has become of the barmaids, the village shop girls, the farmer's daughters, and all the very many _princesses_ that have batted their eyelashes in your direction and all but chased you down and jumped your bones in their effort to plant a flag of ownership on your back? Can you tell me why, for a healthy man in the prime of his youth, all that _desperately earnest_ female attention has yet to result in a _single_ dalliance?"

"I-I-I—" Link stammered, blushing from his neck to his eyebrows and out to the tips of his pointed ears. "It just hasn't been the right time or circumstances!" He took refuge in anger. "What do they all want from me, anyway? I'm not cut out to be a father, much less a _King_, so why the hell do they all expect me to open my arms and wait for them to fall in?"

"HA!" the one with Zelda's face laughed a bitter laugh. "Why? Because_,_ for them, it is anything _but_ a logical decision. They take one look at you: an unparalleled physical specimen who acts with consideration rather can conceit, violence personified with a fundamentally gentle nature, and their girl-parts heat up and drag them around without waiting for the brain to catch up. The only way you could be any more a manifestation of raw desire is if you were a misunderstood bad-boy who could only be changed by their love." The woman spat. "Regular people have to work to control their lust. The only lust you will ever know in life is _blood lust."_

"I..." Link's jaw was hanging open. He stumbled away from the stranger and her knight. He struggled with what she'd told him for a few moments, recognized its truth, and then swallowed it whole. "I've been wondering what was up with that." He turned a glare on the woman, but nothing more. "Thanks for telling me. Your soft touch with hard news is really something, by the way. Did I gut your boyfriend in a street fight or something? What the hell is your problem with me?"

"Really? Nothing?" She ignored his question for a moment and wondered at his resilience. "I just told you you'll never feel passionate love! Doesn't that hurt?"

"Hurt is relative," Link didn't hesitate. "For example, I just let my friend die an insane death and struck down an innocent child with my own hands. _That__hurt._ I've never known passionate love. How can I miss something I've never had?"

Link thought he meant what he said, but he also knew it was partly a lie. There was no time to deal with news like that now. Doubtless there would be plenty of time to break down about it later. The only relief was to know there was an _explanation_ for the way he dealt with women. He'd thought he could shrug off all those eagerly offered giggly girl bits just because he was so madly, hopelessly in love with—well never mind, that ship had sailed. He knew he could love in his heart, and the fact that the feelings would never be tainted with raw carnal lust could, with great effort and the right sort of double-think, be considered an advantage.

"My, what an unexpectedly even and mature response to psychological torment," the Traveler was back to being calm, calculating, and disturbingly emotionless. "The last Hero I struck at with that particular blow jumped off a bridge. He was a Hero with the third layer, so he survived, but still, well done."

"Wha-" Link did a double-take. He then felt a sudden spike of rage so acute that he thought he must shoot beams of instant murder out of his eyes from the sheer intensity of it all. "_That was another test_!"

"It's _all_ a test," she carelessly replied, "and once again you have passed. Congratulations."

"How... how... how..." Link struggled to express the depths of his amazement at her casual callousness. He could not, however, and swallowed his discomfiture. "How about we just go back to fighting?" Link eventually suggested. She nodded and rewarded him with a mild grin.

"For being such a good sport, I'll have Sheik 'go easy' on you." The stranger turned back and raised her hand again. "Bare hands only until you figure out how to manifest a weapon."

"I thought this was supposed to be an earnest test?" Link gave her an angry grin, the best he could do to hold down his frustration.

"You've obviously never exchanged fisticuffs with a Sheikah knight," Her smile evened out to a grim line again. "Blades would be a mercy. At least that's a quick, clean death."

"We'll see," Link raised his fists just as the woman swept her hand down.

**Next Chapter: Link and Traveler**

Coming soon. For real.


	25. Link and Traveler

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 11: Link and Traveler**

**The Stranger's Calm Zone, Link's Home**

Link waited in a stand-up fighter's stance and looked over his fists at Sheik. The agreement was bare hands only, which was an improvement over facing down the man's inhumanly well-thrown blades with no shield and no armor. Still, the Traveler's chilling words, her calm assurance that he was in for more than he bargained, was more than enough to give him pause. It might just be psychological warfare, but she knew enough about him to know how well he fought, and that Sheik guy had hidden depths. All that, and there was still the matter of this fight being on her turf, the astral plane, and all the unknown facets that had yet to come to light on that front. Thus, caution was the name of Link's game as he advanced on his opponent.

The Traveler brought her hand down, but neither Link nor Sheik seemed to pay her any mind. Sheik, in fact, seemed to be ignoring them both. He took up no stance and was looking off to one side as Link slowly closed in with his guard up and all his senses tuned to maximum alert. If the point of feigning indifference to their fight was to infuriate Link and throw him off his game, then hell, it _worked. _Link was sweating bullets as he closed in to just out of range of a kick from the other warrior's long, well-muscled legs.

Despite the fact that Sheik was standing flat-footed and looking away, Link couldn't think of any way to attack. A simple sucker-punch was the obvious choice, but every single time he tensed to make a step-in and punch, his instincts warned him off. In his mind's eye, he could see the consequences of each attack before he even made it. A straight punch would find Sheik writhing away like a reed in the wind, a kick would be ducked high or caught low, a tackle would meet a back flip and counter-kick. It was at that point that Link recognized that Sheik's fighting style was completely defensive, pivoting around the counterattack like nothing Link had ever encountered before. All this, and they'd yet to exchange a single blow.

"Think fast," Link advised, and kicked a large pebble up off the ground. It hopped up to face height almost too fast to see. However, it did not strike Sheik. That would have been against the rules. Sheik demonstrated statuesque willpower, not even budging as the rock grazed by his face by the breadth of a centimeter. Link's attack arrived at the same instant the stone would have struck.

What followed was a series of attacks and counters that would have brought any crowd in the world to their feet in awed cheers. Link's initial jab was just as much of a feint as the stone, and just as useless. When his other fist came in a moment later, Sheik bent away like he was made of living rubber. With a balletic and boneless twist, he came in with a counter-jab at Link's throat. Link caught the fingers and yanked while spinning to generate an over-shoulder throw. Sheik jumped into the throw and came down on his feet, then continued the momentum of the throw, yanked on Link's arm, and tossed in a leg-sweep to put him on his back. On his way to the ground, Link jabbed his foot up into Sheik's gut and leveraged him along in a rolling throw with the grip on the hand he still held. Sheik twisted like a corkscrew and reversed the throw, but that motion allowed Link to roll back onto his feet in turn. Hand still gripped, Link tried to get in a few punches, and after a furious exchange of blows, a plated boot in the nose finally drove him back.

Link and a much less composed Sheik stood four feet apart in wildly different fighting stances. Link's was a hybrid boxing stance that protected the face with the fists, while Sheik's was some unknowable martial arts guard that had him on his tiptoes with one leg far in front of the other and the fists held at hip height with elbows bent. Link was bleeding freely from the nose and his vision was a bit blurred, but as he watched, Sheik had to bend the shattered and dislocated fingers of the hand Link had grabbed into something closer to a natural position.

"Ready for another go?" Link asked. It probably would have sounded way cooler if the damage to his nose hadn't stuffed his sinuses with blood and swelling.

Sheik centered his stance and waited for Link again. They each had a better measure for the other now, but all that meant was that Sheik was taking him seriously now. Link took a close look at Sheik's serious stance rather than the gimmicky one he'd used before, found himself warded off from every angle he even began to consider, and let out a sigh. This was going to get ugly.

Unfortunately, he couldn't have been more right. After another series of counters and throws ended when Link bundled Sheik into a rear naked choke, the man responded by gouging Link's right eye so hard that it popped out of his skull. By some miracle, Link managed to keep the choke, even as he screamed in pain, but that ended when Sheik planted one foot on the ground and kicked up and over his shoulder with the other in a hyper-extended splits. The flexibility the move required took Link entirely off guard and he wound up with a metal boot toe in his empty eye socket. He recoiled, loosening the grip enough for Sheik to do another splits kick and hit him in the temple. Link browned out and saw the world tumble by as he hit the ground.

He did not see the blow that claimed his 'life,' but when he was reconstituted a moment later, he found Sheik with a boot on the throat of his old body. Sheik had been restored in the same way, and a fresh body materialized in the same way it had when the Traveler had first summoned him.

"Crushed throat, point to Sheik," the Traveler made her thoroughly unnecessary report. Link glowered at her.

"Where did you find this guy?" he asked, holding no hope for an actual answer. "It's not many that can get the legs to move that way. I'm impressed."

"Don't feel too bad," the Traveler actually looked kind of pale now that Link was paying attention again, and she was cradling her hand in obvious discomfort. "That's actually the closest anyone's ever come to beating Sheik in a fair, no-magic fist fight. Care for another round?"

_"Absolutely,"_ Link replied, and it was true. Now that his ego was 'free' of the changes the Triforce had wrought on his body, he was seeing combat in a whole new way. It had been exhilarating before, probably as exhilarating as sex, if the Traveler's claims were to be believed. This fight was different, it was a cold thing stitched from brief moments of murderous rage, and Link felt his brain burning with a purely mental bliss as he considered how to crack this worthy opponent open.

The Traveler began another round, but Link only had eyes for Sheik. There were no gimmicks this time, he simply waited in the cocoon of that exotic stance he used and dared Link to attack. Link declined. Instead, Link advanced with his arms down until he was well within Sheik's reach. Sheik took nimble backward steps to maintain the minimum effective distance for his techniques, and Link stopped. He held out his hand palm-forward and took a large step, but didn't try to close and grab Sheik. Sheik retreated again, trying to compensate for the different shape the extended arm gave to Link's threat zone, and nearly tripped as he shifted his stance.

"What's the matter?" Link asked, definitely not with any hint of smugness or satisfaction, "your style doesn't have any offensive moves? I'm wide open, why not come and get me?"

Sheik didn't even begin to rise to the taunt. He knew his defense was unbreakable and he was ahead in points. Why initiate? Or so Link read from the bored look in Sheik's hard eye and the utter lack of interest in his extended arm. With that line of strategy more or less exhausted, Link took a few steps back and once again considered Sheik's stance. After a long, bizarrely tense minute, he put up his fists and began to edge back toward Sheik again.

Link got to business range and stepped in with a punch that Sheik easily dodged. He ate a knee in the teeth for his troubles, but absorbed the damage and came back with another punch. Again, Sheik dodged and countered, and again Link pressed the attack despite the pain. One more time Link committed to an obvious attack, and this time he guessed the counter correctly. When Sheik's leg came around to hammer Link into unconsciousness, he ducked. A blow that would have put his lights out instead scrapped along his cheek, gashing his face open, but leaving Link with a unique opportunity. This time Link didn't mess around with fancy holds, but immediately tackled Sheik and bore him to the ground.

In the tall grass, their fight became a battle of position and leverage. Sheik twisted and squirmed like an eel, slipping from clenches that would have tied a normal warrior into knots using evasions that should have left his tendons ripped and his joints dislocated. He was the most double-jointed person Link had ever even heard of, and getting a grip on him was like wrestling with a professional contortionist, but in the end, Link got him. He had been trained for combat at this distance in a way that Sheik simply wasn't, and eventually wound up mounted over Sheik's stomach with knees clenched on his hips to keep him pinned and his hands free. Sheik had his hands up warding his face and was scrabbling for purchase with his legs.

"I'll give you one chance to give up," Link managed to say, spewing blood out through his bruised and battered face. One thing he had to hand to Sheik—he might not have been trained as a wrestler, but he could get off a bone-breaking punch without any windup to speak of. About five times one of those punches had almost gotten him sprung from Link's clench, and Link's face was probably broken in at least two places.

Sheik's answer was to twist his legs in an inhuman manner and wrap his ankles up around Link's neck. Despite having the full mount, Link was suddenly in danger of being choked out. He could escape by letting Sheik up, but he'd spent too long fighting for position to consider that. Instead, Link grabbed one of the steel-clad feet cutting his air off and gripped it by the heel and toe. The world was graying-out as his brain suffocated, but he had enough left in him to find the joint where the steel greaves allowed ankle motion and _twist. _There was a nauseating sound as the ankle snapped and the tendons tore from the bones, and Sheik made the first sound Link had heard from him: a low moan of agony. Suddenly Link could breathe again, and he took his chance to reach down and grab Sheik by the throat with one hand. Sheik grabbed the hand with both of his and applied hard fingertips to pressure points, but Link was bearing down on him with all his weight, and wouldn't be budged. Sheik instantly switched to the eye-gouge, and Link lost his left peeper this time before he could twist away.

Screaming in agony and battle fury, Link brought his free hand down like a hammer and smashed Sheik's face where it was hidden behind the turban-mask. The first shot broke the nose and gushed blood out to stain the white cloth that hid his features. Sheik's hands came up to guard his face again, but he was weakening from suffocation and was easily brushed aside by another punch. The second blow bounced off with only superficial harm, but the third shattered a facial bone and caved in one of his cheeks.

Sheik fell dead limp. More blood gushed, and now it was fortunate that he wore the mask, because it would hide the mess Link was making of his face. After another few punches _squished_ rather than pounding, the red haze left in his one eye gave Link no choice but to add the _coup de grace_. He removed his hand from Sheik's throat, lined up a blow at his unmoving, unresisting body, and brought his elbow down on the warrior's throat with all the power left in him. It promptly caved in, shattering any hope that body might have at breathing again, and Link was done.

For a moment there was nothing to do but listen to the blood pound in his ears and feel the agony of his own wounds. These fights were insane, if not for the death match rules, then because the restoration afterward encouraged the fighter to absorb any possible non-fatal wound in search of the scoring blow on the opponent.

Link, as the victor, was restored second this time. He took a moment to appreciate a body with two eyes and intact facial bones, and then looked to find the Traveler. This time her insipid scoring ritual would be to his benefit, and so he was actually interested in hearing it. What he found was that she was turned away from the fight with one hand on her face and the other on her throat, her whole body shaking with violent tremors.

"So, you're getting tired of this absurd test, too?" Link was not a chauvinist by nature, he'd known too many extremely capable women for that. Still, it was hard to think of why she'd be affected that way if not because she hadn't the stomach for the brutality of the violence she'd ordered up.

"Nng—not at all," she managed to answer after a pregnant pause. She turned and faced him, pale and still shivering, but with dry eyes and a stiff lip. "However, this is taking too long, and it will only take longer now that you and Sheik have measured up against one another. Perhaps another adjustment is in order."

"I thought you said you had plenty of time," Link frowned. There was something about the way she reacted to Sheik's loss, indeed, something about her in general that seemed off after each fight. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

"I have all the time in the universe," she replied, "but do you? No, we had best speed this process. I've learned all I can from your bare-fisted style, and you're looking quite good. Prove yourself with blades and we'll end this farce and discuss the Triforce."

"Erm," Link found himself in the middle of warring concerns. He began to voice them as he silently felt relief at the nearing conclusion of these fights and curiosity over where she could possibly think he had to get to anytime soon. The speed with which she'd lost her enthusiasm for these duels she had herself proposed ran a distant third. "I'd like nothing better than to show you how I'm many times better with blades than fists, except that I have no blade. Remember?"

"If you haven't figured it out by now, you'll never learn the technique on your own," the Traveler beckoned him over. Link walked up to her and found her hand on his forehead before he could even ask what was going on.

"Remember your weapon of choice," she told him, and he seemed to hear the words with every atom of his body. "Think of its feel, its weight in your hand, the balance it kept, the sound of its slice, and the smell of its steel. Try to imagine the weapon being woven out of ribbons, and know that every ribbon is a facet of your recollection."

Link did as he was told. Despite utter certainty that he was going to fail again, he put forth a genuine effort, and to his absolute shock, he soon felt a weight in his hand. The weight was so familiar that he didn't even have to look to know that it was his trusty old Ordon sword, which had served him so well when magic was something new and alien, and which he had left in pieces on the floor of the tomb where he'd found Aarika's blade.

"Do you think you could do that again on your own?" the Traveler asked as she removed her hand from his forehead. Instead of answering, Link concentrated. It took longer on his own, but he was soon holding a perfectly solid Hylian shield in his off-hand. The Traveler spared him a wan smile.

"I thought you said your powers wouldn't work on me?" Link asked as he turned back to face Sheik again.

"Only the fun ones," she sighed, "the constructive ones still have some effect. Now, where was I? Oh... Crushed throat," she grimaced, "point to Link. Next round, begin." She didn't even bother with a hand-wave.

Link had just enough time to kneel and duck behind his shield before a veritable cloud of throwing knives bore down on him. The first bunch either careened off his shield or buried into the ground around him, but it was a close thing. He literally lost some hair and got a small gash on his skull as one particularly close call shaved by his brow, and then he was up and moving.

He got exactly two steps before a knife ruined his right knee and another stabbed into the meat of his left calf, sending him ingloriously to the ground. He tried to keep his shield up, but he bounced wrong in the grass, and his head grew a knife like a unicorn horn. When he was restored a moment later, he came right out with a string of curses.

"Fatal head trauma," the Traveler announced, "point to Sheik. I believe that makes it three to one. In any case, do you see what I mean about the rounds being shorter? At this pace, we should finish with plenty of time."

"I see you're 'enthusiastic' again," Link muttered as he eyed Sheik and tried to devise a strategy for closing on him. "Do you find killing a bit less ugly when it's done cleanly with blades, or is it just easier at range when you don't have to watch the opponent's eyes go dead?"

"It seems to me that killing is ugly at any range," she answered quite soberly, and raised her hand to give another starting signal. "Are you shocked to know this has turned into as much a test of my will as of yours?"

Link didn't have time to contemplate that remark as her arm came down and the air filled with knives. Armed and ready now, Link found he could track the motion of Sheik's hands to anticipate where each flight of knives would go. Coordinating that with sweeping blocks from his shield let him gain ground on the lithe warrior. Eventually, Sheik decided he wouldn't be sneaking anymore blades through that defense from range and charged Link on the spot.

The two fighters came together with a clash of steel. Link opened with a horizontal slash to test Sheik's response and was checked instantly. Sheik ducked, deflected his slash with a small blade in one hand and stabbed for the guts with another small blade in his other hand. Link cracked him on the wrist with his shield to knock away the stab and slashed again on the backhand. Shiek flipped back, then bounced to the side like a spring twice and came back at him from a new direction. Link caught his lunge on his shield and tried to drive him to the ground, but Shiek flipped right up and over him in an acrobatic vault. Before Link could react, he had a gash down his back from his shoulder to his hip.

Resisting the shock of the wound, Link spun and drove his shield into Sheik's gut before he could secure his footing after the flip. The man was staggered by the blow and rocked off balance just long enough for Link to get in a good stab. In an awesome display of body control, Sheik contorted away from the stab so that it barely grazed his abdomen. Link twisted to reverse his spin and disembowel Sheik with the blade, but met no resistance. Sheik had contorted backward and planted his hands so he was bent into a crab-walk, and Link's slash passed right over him. As Link watched, helplessly off balance, Sheik's toe came up in a kick and grazed his neck. Link recovered and brought up his blade to cut Sheik in two, but he was already bleeding to death.

"Neck severed by hidden toe blade," the Traveler announced, "Point to Sheik." She paused, startled by the look of fulminating frustration on the face of Link's newest body. Then she smirked. "My, my, is the Triforce really that much of your combat ability? Sheik here isn't even a blademaster, and still he's only one point shy of victory against the mighty Hero of Courage?"

"Would you shut up?" Link growled. "You're making me want to go back to fists!"

The Traveler paled at that suggestion. Sheik would inevitably win if he could stay out of Link's grips, but the chance for her champion to wind up in another skin-to-skin embrace of death didn't seem to appeal to her at all. The fact that Link had seemingly caught on to the relationship between her and her champion was lost in the shuffle as she decided to even up the odds.

"Stop trying to overpower Sheik," she suggested, ignoring the way he bristled at her advice. "You are bigger and stronger, yes, but he's faster and far more agile, and it evens out. You're not some inhuman physical monster in this place—the Triforce has spoiled you in that respect. Without it's crutch, you will have to tap in to your true fighting ability." She paused again and grew an impish look. "I've decided to give you a pass either way, but if Sheik takes the fifth point from you, I won't stop mocking you for as long as we work together."

"Well, that settles it then," he couldn't force a happy expression, but he did manage an angry one, "now I'm _really_ motivated."

That was a lie. He couldn't care less about this lady's needling if it meant he could throw down his weapons now and end this pointless and traumatic challenge. On the other hand, her last few taunts had cut to his core. What was he without the Triforce? It had given him such a huge advantage for such a long time that he'd taken to handicapping himself just to keep battles stimulating. Now, without it, he was being humiliated by this little prancing ballet dancer. Not for his pride then, but for his peace of mind and sense of self-worth, Link calmed himself and located his core.

"Mmm, bragging rights, here I come," the Traveler raised her hand and lowered it again with a flourish.

Sheik tried a half-hearted knife toss, but Link had his timing down so precisely that he deflected it with his sword, utterly contemptuous. Hungry for the final kill, Sheik loosened his caution and attacked aggressively, giving Link his first real chance to fight defensively. With sword and shield raised, Link fended off the smaller opponent's tiny blades and took the opportunity to really analyze him. As they exchanged blows, Sheik seeking to penetrate and Link content to guard and parry, Link began to recognize the cadence of Sheik's offensive. His movements were fast, but their true strength was their pinpoint efficiency. Indeed, they were a bit _too_ efficient, and much as he had with Sheik's counter-intensive barehanded style, Link soon felt he could anticipate Sheik's moves by simply expecting him to make the most efficient dodge or strike available.

With that strategy in mind, Link began to cautiously probe the other fighter's defense. There were no wild lunges for the kill on Link's mind now, but rather, a methodical dissassembly of everything that made Sheik an effective fighter. With eyes blazing bright and intense in his total concentration, he began to take Sheik apart one piece at a time.

It began with a graze along his thigh, and then soon after a gash across the forearm with another following on the shin. Now that he could read Sheik's motions, Link shaved closer and closer to his lifeblood, in many cases altering his attacks mid-swing and feinting with everything he had, even down to the fundamental motions of his core muscles, in his ongoing quest to throw Sheik off from his pristine timing. As he accumulated insignificant cuts, Sheik began to slow, until finally Link's blade just plain caught up with him.

With a muted grunt of satisfaction, Link clipped Sheik's left kneecap off with the tip of his sword. Sheik had enough time to wince and stumble before Link whipped his sword around on the backstroke and painted Sheik's neck with a red smile. The resulting blood spray was sickeningly appropriate payback for Link's earlier humiliation, but he truly took no satisfaction from it.

"Severed neck," the Traveler peeped, barely able to speak as she gripped her throat. She was pale as a sheet again and sweating profusely besides. "Point to Link."

"I think we can go ahead and put a stop to this now," Link turned to face her. In this part, he did find some satisfaction. "Sheik here won't beat me again, not without some spectacular change in his fighting style."

"What?—no!" The Traveler put her foot down. She got her color back in a real hurry, too. "Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for a chance to take down a Hero in a contest of arms? If you think I—_Sheik_ is out of moves, think again. He'll get that last point out of you yet!"

"How about no?" Link tossed his sword down with enough force for it to stick in the soil. "This duel is sick and wrong. I could handle that when I thought I was cutting up some phantom memory, but you feel what he does, don't you? What the hell happened to make you want this? What _exactly_ is the 'Hero' to you?"

"You wanna know?" the Traveler grew a deadly serious expression. "_Earn it_. Your pass is revoked. No answers unless you fight this out until the end."

"Holy Din! Are you serious right now?" The sword was back in Link's hand before he really knew what he was doing. "You're going to make me carve you up to test my strength of mind? I Thought I had passed your test, what's up with the flip-flop?"

"That was when I was just about to win!" She seemed to suddenly realize the amount of petulance that was seeping into her tone and caught herself up visibly. With a bit more dignity, she continued, "I honestly didn't expect that pep-talk would work so immediate and complete of a change. I suppose this is what I get for feeling bad about picking on you before you learned the rules of the astral realm."

"Well, I know what I'm doing now," Link relished the lightening tone as a chance to bring this situation back from the brink of disaster, "so let's just take a step back and talk this over, okay? I really don't want to gut you. I kinda want to vomit when I think that you felt me cave Sheik's face in back there. I've had more than enough."

"You're pathetic," the Traveler's expression soured to a bitterness beyond any it had shown before. "I've been taking my pent up aggression out on you all this time, and how do you respond? Turning the other cheek? _Really?_ You say you don't want to fight me, but why not? You were eager enough to vent when you thought it was just another man receiving your aggression. And yet, if the thought of being responsible for a woman experiencing pain really bothered you all that much, you'd do something about the trail of longing hearts abandoned in the dusts of your journeys."

"But that's why I never-" Link began, and then stopped himself from rising to her bait. He felt the distinct urge to kick himself. "Would you _stop_ that! These tests are driving me crazy!"

"Ha!" she smiled a real, honest smile, and then gave a little bow. "I would have been truly disappointed if that deception had worked a third time." Completely calm again, she rolled out whatever kink was left in her neck from the sensation of being half-decapitated and heaved a deep breath of satisfaction. "Your response to emotional manipulation is also satisfactory. Goodness, you just might make the cut at this rate. However, I must insist that we do fight this contest out to the last point-"

"Hey, I just said-"

"Your reluctance is admirable," she interrupted his interruption, "but I really must insist. You see, as much as it was part of the test, I was honest when I said I wanted to test myself against a full-fledged Hero. Think for a moment, if it weren't a woman, would you have any object to engaging me in this contest, no matter how futile? Would you deny me even the chance to prove myself?"

"Well..." Link didn't have an answer. He was still getting over her unbelievable talent for lying with every mannerism and facet of her body and tone. Now that she was earnest again, he wasn't sure what to make of her.

"Of course not," she answered for him. "That double standard you apply to men and women has its place, but the battlefield is not it. Let the remainder of this contest be an object lesson to you in suppressing your noble predilections when the need is great. I'm willing to swallow a bit of pride if that is the fate of our competition, but I really do think I may surprise you yet."

"I... I guess..."

"Very well then," the Traveler had a bit of a smile for him again. "In that case, shall we dispense with these pretenses?" A halo of light shimmered up to surround her in a field that obscured her from view for a brief moment. It cleared away an instant later, and she was gone. Standing there instead was Sheik. In a moment, battle cleared the last of Link's doubts away in a furious rush.

A knife came in like a flash of light off a glacier and Link's sword was interposed instants before it could rip his throat open. He brought his shield around at top speed for the haymaker blow to Sheik's turbaned skull, anticipated his dodge, and simultaneously struck low with his blade. Sheik dodged again, but nothing human could balance after that second dodge, and he tumbled to the ground. Many motions happened at once, but Link had a plan while Sheik was reacting. His stab beat Sheik's acrobatic retreating backward roll-flip by half a second. When Sheik's move brought him to his feet, he was clutching his stomach.

"Two inch belly puncture," Link barely knew what he said. "Point to me."

Sheik offered a respectful nod. A new body appeared instantly, and Sheik's next attack seemed to come even before it had completely materialized.

This time Sheik tried something new, and it nearly worked. He swung his arm, and out of nowhere a long chain of linked razors whipped out and made a wickedly curving strike toward Link's head. Link brought up his shield and deflected the blow, then had to do a clumsy sideways roll when it wrapped around the edge of his shield and made another go at his vitals. Sheik pressed his attack, whipping the chain around in vast, blur-fast arcs that threshed the long grass around him and forced Link to retreat and parry. Link had nothing but space and his footing was as sure as if the ground itself actively shifted and molded to give him the best balance possible as he walked backwards—because it was. Once again he had achieved a state of unconscious attunement to his Home and was changing it without even thinking.

When he realized he would never bowl Link over no matter how dynamic his offense, Sheik changed tempos, producing a second chain of razors on the fly and twirling both of them into an interlocking tornado of sharp edges. Link had just enough time to anticipate what was coming before Sheik swung both chains forward in a scissoring attack that Link could neither block nor parry. So, he ducked it instead. The bladed chains shaved a patch of hair off Link's head, but their momentum carried Sheik's arms apart and left him wide open. Link stabbed forward out of his crouch, but his attack missed when Sheik backflipped. Link had to block again and dodge to one side as the flip brought both bladed chains at him in a twin horizontal slice, and by the time he'd recovered, Sheik was well away from him.

Brought to a new standoff, Link took a moment to try and figure the bladed chains out. They hit hard enough to be high-gauge security chain, but Sheik twirled them like a dancer making play with cloth ribbons. About the only thing Link could think of for facing a weapon like that was exactly what he did: square his body up behind his shield and charge.

Sheik didn't hesitate, but repeated his scissor attack, this time high and low to neutralize both a shield response and a dodge response. Link did neither. Instead, he planted his sword in the ground to catch the low chain and used the hilt to do a vaulting front-flip. He cleared the second chain by a comfortable inch and once again was completely within Sheik's guard. Sheik was already flipping away before Link was more than halfway to the ground, but using the same dodge twice would be his undoing. Link brought his shield down like a hammer with all the weight of his flip behind it and caught Sheik halfway through his evasive leap. As a result, Sheik took the flat of it in the guts and was batted to the ground to crack his back and skull. Link reflexively brought the shield around again to hammer the windpipe flat, but caught himself at the last moment.

"Pity will kill you," a low, clear voice came out of the turban, "although not today." It was no more than a whisper, but it was all the words Link had ever heard Sheik say. He was so stunned that he almost didn't notice the flash of the dagger in Sheik's hand, and was forced to stumble backward in an awkward dodge. He needn't have bothered. Sheik turned the blade on himself, jabbing it into the crook of his elbow and slicing the inside of his forearm open all the way to the wrist.

Link's jaw flopped open, and he said nothing as Sheik's body was replaced again. The new Sheik did not attack immediately, but took up a pensive stance some ways away. He balanced on one foot and stared off into the horizon, and the air he had about him was so thoroughly calm that Link actually let his guard down.

"Point to you, and now we're evened up," Sheik said, and his voice was a strange thing, soft and musical. It reminded Link of someone, but his brain wouldn't make the obvious connections. "You really are quite amazing. I've been developing this style for the equivalent of many decades, and you, young man, have dissected it to impotence in moments."

"I'm a blademaster... or so I hear," Link shook his head at the word, one of the many subjects that ruled his life which he hardly understood. "That's got to count as some kind of unfair advantage. Can't we let this be the end of it?" Link pleaded.

He got his answer when a small round object flicked out from Sheik's fingers and zipped to the ground between him and Link, even as Sheik stared off toward the horizon. One moment the world was there, the next he cold see nothing but a hot, white light. Even as he was blinded, Link's instincts screamed danger. Without really understanding why, he thrust his blade up over his shoulder.

Two things happened at once then, and neither was particularly pleasant. Above him, Link felt the blade tip bury into flesh, and the particular catch of it suggested that it had penetrated the ribcage. Closer to home, a shaft of fire blazed down through Link's chest from his collar and pierced his heart. Bodies collapsed in numb heaps and new versions were printed in perfect unison. When he had his orientation back a few seconds later, Link was treated to the sight of himself and Sheik impaled on each other's blades. Sheik's new body was standing a little ways off, considering the morbid tableau with even more intensity than Link. Apparently, he was just as shocked by Link's counter as Link had been by his sudden sneak attack.

"Well, I've had enough of this," Link didn't just drop his weapons, he chucked them off in different directions. They vanished before they hit the ground. "Do I pass yet, or do I have to twist the heads off of some imaginary kittens here in dreamland before you understand just how serious I am?"

"No, I suppose that's that. Ask your questions. I'll answer anything within reason, and then we'll talk about what we can do to help one another." Sheik turned back to Link and promptly pulled off his turban mask. A spill of long hair cascaded out and revealed the Traveler's features. Link's eyes popped as he made a small choking sound which he covered with a cough.

"_Idiot_!" Link screamed in his head as he imagined a great steel boot stomping on his brain and tried to figure out why the hell he was so shocked. "_Of course it was her all along, you twit! Do you really think a guy could produce hip movements like that?_ _God, to think it was just some kind of memory she was controlling, I really must be some kind of-"_

"Don't worry, Hero," Sheik, or rather, the Traveler, slapped him on the shoulder to startle him out of his muddled thoughts. She'd seen right through him. Indeed, she'd probably stripped the mask specifically to enjoy his reaction. "None of your ilk ever gets it right away. Chauvinism runs deep in the Hero 'template.' It helps to ensure the immediate and reflexive need to respond to a princess in danger with unthinking heroics."

Link didn't answer at first, but let himself wallow in resentment. Her obvious pleasure at the shock she'd given him by taking off the mask and revealing that a girl had kicked his ass even _once_, much less_ four times_, was really very annoying. Then he let it go. Her words not withstanding, as far as he knew, he was still being tested. Besides, it was long past time to turn the tables.

"Is your name Zelda?" Link asked, "are you really of the royal family of Hyrule?"

"Ah, well," the Traveler's pleasure faded instantly back to cool neutrality. "I promised you some answers, didn't I? Let us see how good you are at asking questions. For a start, that one is rather poor. Asking questions one already knows the answer to shows a lack of confidence, either in oneself, or in the questioned one."

"Are you going to get around to an answer at some point?" Link sighed. With a sinking feeling, he realized that he probably _still_ couldn't tell if this strange person was lying to him or not. In that respect, she'd correctly identified his lack of confidence in this whole situation.

"I did have that name once, although that was long, long ago." The Traveler spoke, and as she talked, the years began to file back onto her face. Although it stopped long before the point that Link had first seen her show, she once again looked more like Zelda's mother than her sister. "Every firstborn daughter of the royal family is given that name, and has been in unbroken succession since the earliest days of Hyrule. Dynasties and bloodlines have come and gone, but that tradition has lingered. For the sake of clarity, 'Traveler' is still the address I prefer. No need to confuse me with more recent royal offspring."

"Okay, so..." Link grasped for more questions. Much as he expected, her answers did less to clarify than they did to confuse. "Are you related to the Zelda I know in some way?"

"Still beating around the bush?" the Traveler sniffed and rolled her eyes. "What you really want to know is why I look so much like the woman who currently bears the Triforce of Wisdom. That is your question, yes?"

"Um," Link only nodded. She'd begun as adversarial, then became enigmatic, then two-faced, and now she was showing yet another face. He felt now as if he were a schoolboy being called to task by his teacher.

"The answer is simply that I once held that power, too." The Traveler did something, and with a flare of light her clothes changed into a simple white and pink robe decorated with Triforce emblems and the Hylian Eagle. "Although the royal dynasty has dwindled, died out, and been replaced innumerable times in the ages since I was born into it and named, and thus 'your' Zelda and I are no more related than any two Hylians of pure enough blood to produce the ears," she indicated the pointed lobes protruding from her long, brown-blond locks, "we still look as close as immediate family. That is called the power of incarnation. All the features that make a vessel appropriate to contain the Triforce are gathered together through subtle interactions of fate and concentrated into a chosen child. Is it really so strange that two people born with identical fundamental traits should also have the same basic face and build?"

Link considered that answer for a while and nodded. This was no mere woman, then, but a being of unknowable ancient proportions. Still, she was only about the third immortal he'd ever met. That she was much, much older than she looked at her worst was actually the easiest part of that to accept. And still, one portion of her response jumped out at him and grabbed him around the heart, squeezing down tight.

"You held the Triforce once... but Zelda holds it now." Link hardly dared to breathe, lest he lose his grip on the ephemeral thread of hope that was now dangling before him. "Does that mean there is some way to be rid of the damned thing? It _must_ mean that, right?"

"Oh-ho, let's not get ahead of ourselves." The Traveler smirked, tilted her head at a mischievous angle, and chuckled a fairly mean chuckle. "Eventually, you're going to ask me: 'where is the Triforce of Courage?' When you do, I will also tell you how I came to be parted from Wisdom. In any case, you've bonded to Courage far too closely to hope to be rid of it by any means. It's best that you give up on that line of thinking right now. Otherwise, what would you like to know next?"

"Where is the Triforce of Courage?" Link asked instantly, unable to accept that he was beyond whatever had saved this woman from the Triforce before death had worked its standard solution on all of her problems at once.

"Hmm," the Traveler's smug look only deepened. "The answer to that question will end our conversation for the day. Weren't you boiling over with questions earlier?"

Link bit down on his desire to scream at her. Then, he took a deep breath and chastised himself much more calmly. She was _still_ purposely trying to entice a reaction out of him. The moment he recognized that, he knew what his next question should be.

"Why are trying so hard to make me blow my top?" Link asked. "What's your problem with me? Or is it with 'Heroes' in general?"

"Now _there_ is a good question!" The Traveler's expression became much more animated as her fluid features melted several years backward once again. "The truth is, I've been testing you to make sure you have what it takes to handle the kind of power you will receive when you take active control of the Triforce. Ironically, the same features that make a Triforce vessel an ideal puppet of fate also make them terribly dangerous should they ever tap into anything deeper than the side-effects of having the Triforce on hand."

"What do you mean?" Link felt a chill run down his spine. The Traveler noticed his sudden cold sweat, and her smile vanished.

"I mean, I have personally witnessed eight different vessels grasp the power of the Triforce and exercise it with volition. Of those eight, three had already been driven mad by the changes the Triforce wrought upon their bodies, so I suppose they don't count. Four of the remaining five went on to create incredible discord and chaos in the world. Some people would even call their actions... evil."

"I've made it my business to watch those who the Triforce works through," the Traveler continued unbidden as Link felt the strength go out of his legs and slowly sank to the ground. "The first I knew to evolve his power was a Hero who incarnated not very long at all after I... became the way I am, and began to observe the way I do. I was still young then, and once I made up my mind to intervene, it wasn't very long at all before I was 'involved' with him in more ways than one. Years after the crisis he was incarnated to face had been resolved, we were still together, and working on our understanding of the Triforce together with that period's Vessel of Wisdom." She paused. What might have been genuine hurt, but was probably just another lie, passed over the Traveler's features then.

"I suppose I should have seen her jealousy, her alienation, the dark seed that grew in her heart, even as she smiled and worked with us, side-by-side. We don't have time to go into the details, but one month after we learned how to access the deeper powers of the Triforce, the new powers she'd gained secured for her the basis for an empire of slaves more dark and fell than anything even Gannondorf had ever contemplated. The Hero of that time, the one who I had gotten far too familiar with... he didn't take the betrayal well. I was cast aside, and he took his solace in the blood of his former ruler's minions. By the time she finally crushed him a decade later, there was nothing left of him I could recognize. He was a bloodthirsty berzerker, and he took most of the population of a city with him during the battle that ended with his death, including non-combatants and even children."

"I knew it," Link whispered. He was sitting in the grass with his legs stretched out, looking up at the calm sky of his Home without much comprehension in his eyes.

"Needless to say, that was the last time I ever intervened _directly_ to help Triforce bearers. I've poked around here and there enough that my monicker is known among various mystic circles, but this is my biggest move in... well, practically forever. I suppose that's a testament to the nature of the threat the world is fa—hey, are you listening?"

"Who were the others?" Link asked without preamble. Accepting that he was listening despite his vacant expression, the Traveler nodded and continued.

"Among other things, grasping the Triforce with your will grants long life. Thus, the third awakened user was a young Hero that my corrupt 'sister' of wisdom captured and twisted, almost from the first day of his incarnation. He became a dark knight the likes of which the world hasn't known since, and ruled beside that foul beast of a Queen until she tired of seeing her own vile reflection in his empty heart and disposed of him, hoping for the chance to corrupt another incarnation later on. The fourth was the good one. I manipulated events to block 'Dark Zelda' from capturing him as she had the last. In the end, he actually wound up teaming with Gannon himself to unseat her from her centuries-old throne of violent dictatorship. That undying piece of filth didn't appreciate the competition for the title of undisputed master of Hyrule, and war, in that case, truly made for strange bedfellows. The aftermath was a mess of betrayals and intrigue in the ashes of her empire, and that Hero wound up spending his life to send Gannon packing. After that there was just one other who did it while still sane."

"He was a Hero among Heroes... actually, he rather reminds me of you. After he broke Gannon, he disappeared from public life in search of greater adventures. Since he seemed to lack ambition to become anything more than a great swordsman, I noted his success and then turned my eyes elsewhere. I suppose that's the most recent of the many grave errors I've made in my life."

"What do you mean?" Despite himself, Link was hanging on her every word. With a story that wove delicately between everything he wished for and everything he feared, she had enraptured him.

"That Hero eventually became obsessed with finding 'worthy opponents.'" The Traveler looked about ready to spit as she continued, "throughout his endless wandering through the darkest, most ancient parts of the world, he learned of demons and of the divos, and he turned his obsession and all of his great power toward rooting them out for a chance to do battle with them. He hadn't the knowledge to summon a demon or free the divos himself, so he went to the most knowledgeable person he knew with the intent to have her do it, even at sword-point, if need be. Of course, the Zelda of that age would have none of it, even after that Hero had tortured her entire family and most of her servants to death before her eyes, and eventually managed to stop that misguided 'Hero' at the cost of her own life."

The traveler paused and gave Link a mysterious little smirk. "With all the power she could muster by sacrificing her own life, she just barely managed to force a change in that Hero's mind. In essence, she forced him to see his current actions with the eyes he'd had when he rescued her from Gannon and became Hyrule's savior. He promptly devolved into a raving lunatic and soon consumed himself with the Triforce power he'd gained."

The traveler's story came to a chill, heart-wrenching end, and Link stood mute before her. In the whirl of thoughts and emotions that had assailed him since this infernal test had begun, nothing began to compare to what he felt now. Of course, the Traveler had dangled a few shreds of hope as she pounded viciously upon his greatest terror, and Link wasn't the kind to give up without first grasping at every possible straw.

"This one that turned out decent," Link groaned as he shifted from his knees to a more comfortable sitting position and leaned forward to hug his legs, "do you think he would have stayed sane and 'heroic' if he hadn't died young in battle?"

"Who ever said he died young?" the one with Zelda's face didn't hide her smirk, "it took him over ninety years of constant underground resistance warfare to bring down the Dark Queen. Even then, he only managed to when Gannondorf resurfaced. The resistance movement he built over those many human generations was a magnificent paragon of justice in the darkest of times, mostly because he personally prevented them from ceding the moral high ground and devolving into massacre tactics against the Dark Queen's mind-slave army. In the end, he even managed to anticipate and check Gannondorf's inevitable bid for power, although that effort cost him his life. Without going into too much detail, I would say that he was almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that there is still a Hyrule or any Hylians around today."

"If he was such a big-shot, why haven't I ever heard of him?" Link felt his temperature start to rise. It had occurred to him sometime during her story that she was an avowed liar of great skill. How much of this was true? She could have completely fabricated the entire saga of the 'dark queen' and he would never know the difference by how she told it. "How do I know you're not just trying to manipulate me with these stories of destroyers and heroes?"

"This was a long time ago, more than four global recessions of history have come and gone since then, including the great flood and the time of silence." The Traveler had nothing but a cryptic grin to answer his accusation, and so she answered his question instead. "But even if you'd been born the day after he died, you'd probably never hear his name or deeds even once in your whole life. The people of that time, even those who weren't thralls of the queen, even those who worked with him in his own resistance movement, all feared him and his powers that rivaled the Dark Queen's. His was a legend that surpassed even 'The Hero Chosen by the Gods,' and mortals rarely deal well when they encounter beings like that in real life. After his death, when Hyrule finally faced freedom and peace for the first time in centuries, no one wanted to upset the emerging calm with memories of the monsters that ruled the nation for so long. Even that Hero's closest friends and allies decided it was best if he and the Dark Queen were forgotten, and the history of that time became a muddled re-hashing of the Battle for the Triforce that Hylians find so familiar."

"In other words," Link finished for her, still not sure how much of this to believe, "he saved Hyrule, maybe even the whole world, and for his trouble he was erased from history to make people feel more comfortable with being merely human."

"It was a decision he himself agreed with," the Traveler took note of his tone with a bit of concern as she explained. "There were many among the resistance that had been mentored by the Hero, whose parents and grand parents and great-grandparents had all been mentored by the Hero, who wanted to sacrifice themselves so that he could live on and become King for Eternity. Indeed, the organization he'd built was so powerful that he needn't have spent his life to drive away Gannondorf after the Queen's fall, if only he'd been willing to spend theirs instead. That was the choice that Hero made, in the end. He left the world to mortal hands and the cycle of fate and rebirth rather than do what the Dark Queen had and risk becoming like her as the centuries wore on. I think you can understand that, right?"

Link sat without saying anything. Fear sat like a glacier on his back, weighing down upon him. Alienation, inhumanity, a slow decent into madness, or even the willful embrace of madness as time wore down his ability to distinguish between right and wrong—everything he had come to fear within himself and about his potential now stared him directly in the face. Regardless of whether it was true or not, this parable of the Dark Queen along with the other about the Mad Swordsman demonstrated the best and worst potential outcomes that lay in his future. As it was, the odds were stacked against him. Still... there wasn't any other way, was there? He could sacrifice himself to this power and risk becoming what he feared, or he could wait, relatively helpless, and see how many of those he cared for would be consumed as towering events continued to pound upon the foundations of the world. And of course, he'd never been the kind to sit around and wait, now had he?

"That's some heavy stuff you peddle," Link rocked himself back to his feet and stretched his body, able to manage a wan smile and not much else. "Just out of curiosity, how much of it was true?"

"Enough that you should be worried about this power I'm going to show you," the Traveler replied without humor, "I know I am. At least, I take it from this that you have finally decided to grasp the Triforce with your will, yes?"

"Yes," Link sighed. "I'm not so noble as to throw my life away to save others, but what choice do I really have? According to you, my choices are pretty limited. I can continue to bury my head in the sand, in which case the Triforce will eventually drive me mad anyway, at which point my current desires will have no bearing on what I do. Or, I can take the reins now and maybe have some choice in what kind of monster I become someday. My personal preference is to become a justice monster. There seems to be an ample supply of the other kind already."

"And of course, it doesn't hurt that acquiring great power might give you some meaningful leverage in the incomprehensible battles that loom on the horizon... right? I mean, assuming you have any interest in influencing such things." Link gave the Traveler a dirty look, and she replied by briefly sticking her tongue out at him.

"So, what now?" Link asked.

"You have someplace to be," the Traveler informed him, closing on him suddenly and grabbing him by his wrists. "But before that, we'll take the first step. You wanted to know where the Triforce was, and there's no longer any reason to hold off on telling you. So, I need you to close your eyes again."

"Close my—what? What does—" Link began to object, but then remembered which one of them was supposed to know what the hell was going on. With a huff, he closed his eyes. The traveler quickly raised his hands for him and held them at hip height inside hers. The difference in texture and firmness between her gloved and ungloved hands was startling, and distracted him so much that he almost missed it when she started talking.

"I want you to picture a golden triangle in your mind. I know you've seen the Triforce manifest outside a host before; the image you should form should mimic that in every way."

"Okay, I'm doing it," Link humored her as best he could. It was difficult to express the vastness of his skepticism, however. If accessing the untold powers of creation was as simple as picturing a triangle in his mind, he might just die from the sheer anticlimax.

"Now, I'm going to form a link between that image in your mind and the Triforce." There was a brief pause. "You might feel a slight pinch."

"A pin—GAH!" Link was visited by the sensation of someone grabbing a knuckle full of the skin on his forehead and twisting it until it was ripped from his face. When his vision returned from a white haze of agony, he was keeled over on the ground clutching his head with both hands. The pain had spread from the surface and permeated his entire skull, until finally he felt like he'd been kicked in the face by an Ordonian goat.

"What the hell was that for?" Link groaned, wishing he could shuck this wounded body as easily as the gutted husks he'd left behind earlier.

"It will all become clear if you try to picture that golden triangle again." The Traveler knelt by his side and placed the cool softness of her ungloved hand against the spot on his forehead that had given him such pain. The agony immediately began to lessen, and though it did not disappear, Link at least felt well enough to stand.

Link wanted to tell her where she could stick her golden triangle, but the moment she mentioned it, the image jumped into his mind again almost before he realized it. Except now, instead of just being something he imagined, it was almost as though the glowing geometry had its own independent existence within his mind. It could not have seemed more real if Link had spotted it glowing behind his eyes while looking in a mirror. What was more, it did not seem like a simple object fixated within his skull. Rather, it was very much like a triangular door, just barely holding back some unspeakable tide of hot, glowing energy.

"That is the gateway," the Traveler said, "In time, you will learn to tap into it and draw forth the true power of the Triforce. For now, I strongly recommend you don't mess about. You probably can't hurt yourself by fiddling with it before you know what you're doing, but virtually anything else is possible."

"I don't understand, what did you do? Where is the Triforce? Why... why...?" Link couldn't really find the words to express his question. The Traveler seemed to get the message anyway.

"You seem to be laboring under the impression that the Triforce is some bit of glowing magical gold. That's an easy mistake to make, considering how the power manifests when it is not embedded into someone's life force, but it is still a rather horrible misconception. You could dissect a Triforce Vessel down to the last smidgen of meat in his body and never locate that golden triangle, at least not while the Vessel lived. Similarly, you could search this Home of yours until the end of time and never find some location that exists as an analogue to the Golden Power." The Traveler's eyes saw some distant time and place, and her voice droned with meaning. "The truth is, the Triforce and you are no longer two distinct things. The power sleeps within you, even as its reflected glow permeates every part of your body, mind, and soul. You are the Triforce, and the Triforce is you."

"But... this power... I've never... I don't..." Link was still reeling, trying to get a grip on the world now that he had an angry triangular eye glowing its furious gold glare onto the inside of his skull.

"The human mind isn't really meant to comprehend things like the Triforce in all its glory," the Traveler had returned to the here and now, and looked like she regretted it somehow. "Your mind throws up walls that block it away to protect your psyche from being damaged by its mere presence. Since the walls keep things the way they were before the Triforce manifested to begin with, it usually takes intense effort to even realize that they exist, much less strip them away. You should feel grateful. I've saved you about ten years of meditation and introspection."

Link made a choking sound as the Triforce's mere presence continued to strip layers off of his brain. Although he had just gotten up after that metaphysical blow to the head she'd given him, he was already well on his way back down to his knees.

"Of course, ten years of meditation also sharpens one's concentration to the point where you might be able to block the intensity of direct contact with the Triforce. You've been dropped into the deep end, Hero. Show me that a mind which can muster such an offense on the Astral Plane can also master this technique: don't think about the triangle."

"Geh... Nngeh..." Link sputtered. Although the sensation in his head was not pain, it was still utterly debilitating. A shiver passed through his body and left every limb feeling like jelly. He collapsed to the ground like a ragdoll.

"Besides just testing if you have the character to access this power without abusing it, the tests were meant to tell me if you could face this trial and survive." The Traveler knelt down in the tall grass next to Link and spoke directly into his ear. "Don't think about the triangle, Hero. Put it out of your mind. The triangle is the gap in the walls your mind has protected you with until now. If the triangle is gone, the walls will keep you eternally safe. Only when the triangle is there will you be bent under the Triforce's intense presence. Anyone who could defeat Sheik, _me_, on the Astral Plane should be able to manage at least that much."

Right around this point, Link realized that he'd never in his life wanted to punch a girl's lights out more than he did just then. The image of the Traveler taking five across the eyes so hard that she spun twice on her way to the ground was so powerful and satisfying that it actually edged the cycloptic fury of the Dread Triangle from his thoughts. Once it was gone, it was really gone, and Link felt all the lingering effects of its presence clear away in a matter of moments. It wasn't even an effort to avoid thinking of the triangle again, because he was subconsciously terrified of it. By the time he pried himself out of the grass one last time, he couldn't have remembered so much as the word for one of those three-sided thingies if his life depended on it.

"I can see what you mean when you say I can't be rid of it," Link eventually broke the silence the Traveler had been satisfied to linger in after his episode was brought under control. "Everything I am is just a tiny drop floating on the vast lake of that power. Can something like that really be controlled by a person?"

"You have been ill used by that power, Hero," the Traveler nodded, acknowledging his acceptance of the grim reality he dwelt within. "In all my years, I've never seen anyone integrate with it to the extent of you and your Princess. The changes in your body, the changes in your mind, I've seen these all before, but for you two, all this may only be just the beginning." She let that grim fact sink in for a moment, then went on, "But it's not as though the situation is hopeless. With the proper training, that power can become like an extension of the arms and legs, no more difficult to control than walking or throwing a ball. The truth is, you've been using it all along, subconsciously, no more aware of its function than you are of digesting food or growing your hair. Now that you have a door to access it behind the walls of your subconscious, you have the chance to grasp it with your will. The only question is: will you?"

"I..." Link saw in his mind's eye the smoking wasteland in which Leeta's ashes must still swirl, and the red ruin that was all that remained of Tony. "I can't afford not to."

"Well great!" the Traveler slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a haughty smile. Even after everything, this sudden change in her demeanor was enough to make Link's head spin. "Earnest lessons will begin sometime after this mess," she waved an idle hand at the oceans of psychic discord beyond their small calm zone, "clears up. Expect to see me again. In the meantime, you have a date. Consider this our parting gift."

"Wait!" Link protested, still unable to imagine where he needed to be in any sort of rush to get to, "you were supposed to tell me how you escaped from the Triforce. And, you know, come to think of it, an explanation for _why_ you decided to come here and test me would be nice, too."

"Ug," the Traveler's unnaturally cheery face fell. Clearly she'd hopped he would have forgotten that promise, and that final question didn't seem to appeal to her one bit either. "First of all, remember that this will absolutely _not_ work for you. Almost all of my abilities come from old-fashioned practice. I only had the first layer from the Triforce, and so it never fully bound to my soul. Someday, when we meet in the flesh, I'll tell you the whole story. In the meantime," the Traveler held up her gloved hand, "use your imagination."

Without further comment, she pulled off her glove. While all expectations would have suggested a petite female hand should have been promptly revealed, this was not the case. What filled the glove was nothing but empty air. The glove itself was some kind of enchanted prosthesis to compensate for the fact that the Traveler's left arm ended at the elbow.

"What...?" Link began, but lost his chance to ask as the Traveler suddenly pushed forward and grabbed his collar with her one good hand. Her face was beside his in a moment, and she spoke into his ear.

"As for why I came... we'll get to that eventually. If you want to get a head start on returning to a human body, investigate the skinwalker tribes of Gauhome's Black Forest. No need to thank me for this, and the return trip will take care of itself."

Before Link could even use an incoherent noise to express his extreme mystification, the Traveler gave him a shove. Rather than tumbling to the grass, Link found himself dissolving into a comet of green light. The next instant, he was rocketing upward out of his Home and on to the Astral Plane proper. Beneath him, the Traveler nodded in satisfaction, a certain heat coloring her youthful features. She promptly replaced her glove, which once again molded into a complete and functioning hand over her stump, and she was gone in the next instant, a flash of pink light climbing into the mystic sky.

In the wake of their departure, the space the Traveler had cleared collapsed on itself, the ocean of Link's metaphysical injuries rushing in to crush the stranger's testing grounds. In a few violent moments, it was as if the bizarre ordeal had never happened.

**The Central Market Plaza, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

Arrika gripped the peak of the rooftop she'd become trapped upon by her terrified shell of artificial mortal flesh and gathered herself for the effort she was about to make. With utmost care, she slowly straightened her back until she was mounted on the shingled peak by only her thinly stockinged thighs. Over the course of a pulse-pounding minute of extreme terror, she managed to slowly rise to her feet. Sword in hand, she began the ritual before her precarious balance could be tested by even the slightest breeze.

Concentrating on her blade, the vessel of both her own power and the golden glow bequeathed to her by Wolf Link, Arrika once again attempted to summon the complex illusion that would allow her to freely apply all her abilities and magics independently within the material world. Only this time, instead of constructing a complete body from the template that had served her so well as a demigod in the time before history, the body that had proven beyond both her power and what Golden Power Link could currently lend, she instead let the amorph already aligned with her phantasmal body serve as the skeleton for a new manifestation.

Easily to her silent call, a vast coil of silver and gold ribbons poured from the huge white gemstones that sparkled on the hilt of her sword. The ribbons immediately wrapped about her nearby wrist, then spread across her body in a slithering tide to render her into a mummy of luminescent bandages in the blink of an eye. Moments later, a subtle flash of light cleared the ribbons instantly away, leaving her transformed.

"Well... what do you know? It worked." Arrika reveled in her suddenly pristine sense of balance. Rather than a few inches of roof peak, she now felt more like she was standing on a five-foot wide modeling runway, and she expressed the relief that came with this change by doing a model's turn and pose for the benefit of her only audience, Ziggy the wolf. "Can't say I was quite expecting this, though. What do you think?"

From her casual pose, it was easy to see what she meant when she referred to an unexpected change. Now that the ribbons of magical energy had passed, she was wearing a military-cut jerkin and breeches of pristine white, with radiant silver armor around her chest and completely encasing the right side of her body, and extravagant golden embroidery down the unarmored left side. It was, for all intents and purposes, exactly the outfit she'd worn when she'd manifested the night before, except that this time, _her body had not aged_. Now a girl of perhaps ten to thirteen years stood on the roof in the early morning daylight, radiantly clothed and armored and bearing a petite blade with a golden glow that was at least eight inches too long for her five-foot-nothing build. The overall effect was to boggle the mind; as an adult such garb made her look like a divine messenger, as a child it looked more like she was on her way to a costume gala.

The huge wolf didn't budge from where it lay, but huffed out a noisy breath and briefly creased its brow. Arrika read a general lack of opinion into that motion and chuckled. As silly as she looked, the fact that this impromptu hybrid transformation had actually worked was providing Arrika with a great deal of personal amusement. At last though, aware that there was an important task at hand, she took a moment to make sure this configuration was functional, and not merely absurd to behold.

In a motion that no eye could hope to follow, Arrika went from a standing start to launching several dozen blur-fast thrusts to various vital arteries and kill spots on an imaginary target. With a flourishing turn, she cast an illusionary blade at the next building over. A few seconds later, its weather vane and chimney disintegrated into a cloud of wafer-thin rock flakes and metal shavings. Satisfied, she stopped to glance over her shoulder at the crater site where Tony lay suffering, unable to die until she arrived to reclaim the ancient magic tying him to his eradicated body.

"Okay, shorter arms, shorter legs, solid body..." Arrika pinched herself through the durable cloth of her armor undercoat only with great difficulty, and then winced, "that can feel pain. No problem. Ziggy, let's get you settled," Arrika walked over to her recumbent canine ally and lay the glowing sword under his nose. "Take back enough to get yourself moving; I can't possibly be using all of it to keep up _this_ silly form."

The great wolf obeyed, touching his nose to the blade. Instantly he rose back to his paws, recovering much of that supernatural aura that made him so very terrifying. He gave a low growl of satisfaction and shook out his thick, shaggy coat. For her part, Arrika felt her body grow slightly heavier. Instinctively, she knew that some of her supernatural speed and balance had abandoned her. Then again, she still had all the powers inherent to her blade, and so she was willing to bet she could still cleave an anvil in two or carve flesh like butter. If being a bit further from her full divine might was what it took to have an ally at her back, she was willing to make that sacrifice.

"Ready?" she asked Ziggurat, feeling her imitation heart pound with anxiety that had nothing to do with danger and everything to do with public speaking. If she was waiting for the wolf to try and dissuade her, she was waiting in vain, because he growled and tackled her, tossing her up on to his back and then leaping powerfully to launch them off of the rooftop toward their target. Anxiety rising, Arrika could only mumble, "Here's hoping they don't mistake me for an escapee from some rich lord's underage fetish harem."

There was no more time for jokes after that, because with only a few quick, bouncing leaps across the landscape of jutting wreckage that parted the vast crowd, Ziggy delivered her to Tony's side. The crowd, at fist, didn't know how to react to the sudden appearance of a monstrous wolf. They stared, dumbfounded, at least for the few, calm seconds it took Arrika to casually dismount. Ziggy then proceeded to remind them rather succinctly what their reaction should have been by snarling and snapping his vast jaws, driving the leading edge of the crowd back with instinctual terror.

Arrika took advantage of the brief moment purchased for her by Ziggy's outburst and knelt to examine Tony closely. She knew she only had seconds before the general air of religious fervor overcame the crowd's momentary retreat and forced them to try and reclaim their stolen holy site.

"Sweet Mother, Merciful Father," Arrika swore. The difference between a distant glimpse of the horror show that was Tony's still-living body and the very close look she now had was truly staggering. Between the charcoal that was all that remained of his entire right side and the huge cavity in his abdomen currently granting a nauseatingly good view of his ribs and internal organs, even Arrika's jaded eyes were stung. The fact that he was clearly still breathing only made the sight that much more difficult to handle.

In terms of how to treat such wounds, Arrika didn't even know where to start. Certainly if she amputated most of his right side and found some way to keep his guts from spilling out, it might be possible to move him. On the other hand, his body was so damaged, it might just rip apart like a rotten fruit the moment she tried to lift him. With little time and nothing like a good idea, she decided to begin with the simplest triage of all.

"Anthony Giovanni. Can you hear me?" Arrika whispered directly into his ear. Then she leaned back, but kept her face close enough to catch any breath that might carry the faintest word upon it. It was at this point that Arrika received the shock of the decade.

"Arrika?" Tony's voice spoke clear and strong from an inch away. "This is Link. Tony say's he's ready to go now. Could you... release him?"

Arrika stumbled away, eyes bulging, and could do nothing for several seconds except try to swallow her heart back down into her chest from where it was insistently blocking her throat.

**Next Chapter: To Gauhome, With Regrets**

Would you believe: 'Eventually?'


	26. Regrets

This has been done for a few months, and yet I only post it now. This is because I have been dithering over whether or not this was a sufficient end for book two. The answer I came to was: no, not really. But then, all the books are right here in one place. Its not like a certain lack of closure will leave readers desperately hunting for more when the sequel is going to be in the same place and posted faster for this abbreviated end. Frankly, I'm practically to the point where I regret dividing this story into books. Maybe I would be better off labeling them 'Acts' if only to release the subtle psychological pressure to stop writing with only a trilogy...

**The Golden Power: Book Two**

**Chapter 12: Regrets**

**Tony's Home, The Astral Plane**

After the Traveler so abruptly cast him off onto some kind of spiritual journey, Link spent an indeterminate amount of time in a state he found difficult to quantify. It was not unpleasant, per say, but it was highly disconcerting on account of the fact that he was incessantly bombarded with all manner of stimuli he had no practical ability to comprehend. Terms like 'lights' and 'colors,' 'sounds' and 'smells,' even fundamental things like spatial orientation and personal body sense had absolutely no bearing throughout the experience. If he were forced to equate it to something, Link would have instead punched the person trying to force him to equate it to something in the face. It was just that alien.

At length, however, it ended. Since 'time' was one of those things he hadn't been able to reference, he had no idea how long the journey took, but eventually, it was over. When he again had access to senses he could count on and began to perceive his surroundings, he found himself in a ruined, burnt-out shell of a building. For a little while, he thought that he had somehow been transported somewhere in Romali, because everything from the furniture and the architecture around him to the writing scrawled in various places was reminiscent of that particular foreign land. Considering recent events, it was not hard to imagine this particular sort of ruined structure there either. It was not until Link looked down at himself and realized he was still wearing his farmhand's garb that it occurred to him that he still wasn't in his material body. With that settled, he went back to examining the building, trying to figure out where the hell the Traveler had sent him.

Whatever the place had been used for before it was destroyed, Link was not familiar with it. It seemed at fist to be a saloon, because there was a massive bar against one wall with mostly-empty and partially-collapsed alcohol shelves gathering ash behind it. And yet, almost all of the vast floorspace was given over to a variety of different tables in all manner of shapes and sizes, with their only common feature being a surface coating of green felt. Various devices and patterns had been stitched into the felt to form diagrams and slogans, such that Link could only assume that the tables were meant for some specific purpose that the diagrams somehow facilitated. Small wooden coins painted in bright colors were strewn across the filthy, scorched, stained, and beaten felt-top tables, providing no clue to their bygone purpose.

A sudden clattering noise from the building's distant corner caught Link's attention, and he made his way over to its source. The shock of what he found nearly knocked him right off his feet. In this corner, sitting at an oddly undamaged table, an intensely familiar figure was rolling a pair of dice over and over again while muttering to himself in one of the Caredan languages.

"Tony?" Link choked, unable to believe his eyes.

"Si?" the familiar-seeming man turned on his swiveling stool, regarding Link with a face gone pallid in this depressing ruin. For a while after that, his expression was the only thing that spoke. At first there was pure shock to mirror Link's own. Then there was a flush of happiness at recognition. That happiness soon fled though, and his expression settled on a very sombre final note. "Link?" he sighed. "I can't say I thought it was impossible that you might be killed too... but I guess I honestly thought you would manage to survive somehow."

"Who's been killed?" Link asked, sidling up to take a seat next to him at the table. It's surface was absolutely coated in squares forming a complex asymmetric grid, each one framed or filled by text that Link couldn't read. Long rods with wooden hooks on the end were strewn about, and there was a veritable ocean of those colorful tokens scattered in various corners of the bright, plush felt. "Last time I checked, both of us were still alive... at least in the technical sense."

"Denial, huh?" Tony chuckled and tossed his dice again. They came up two-and-one, and he glowered at them. "I had that phase, too. But let me ask you this, my friend: If this isn't some kind of _purgatorium,_ then just where in the world are we?"

"It's not my Home," Link agreed, feeling a large pang of guilt at being cryptic, since he hated it so much when others did it to him. "It must be yours."

Indeed, this was the conclusion Link finally settled on. The one who had invaded his Home for reasons she kept to herself and then tested him with a mind-beating that still had his thoughts jumbled before promising him all the secrets of the Triforce at no stated cost... seemed to have granted him one more boon. Whether it was some attempt to apologize for putting him through the wringer, some kind of bribe to soften him for her future demands, or hell, just another twisted test, Link couldn't really bring himself to care. The Traveler had sent him to Tony's Home, where his ego had also been driven by his grievous injuries. It was an opportunity of which he hadn't even dared to dream.

"Home?" Tony scoffed. "This dump? Maybe when it was new, this casino would have been the kind of place I'd dream of living in, but now its just damned depressing. I can't even say how long I've been here, or exactly what I was doing before I got here, but I know I'm not here because I want to be."

"Casino?" Link asked. Now that he was on the spot, he was in agony. He just couldn't bring himself to broach the subjects that so desperately needed to be discussed. There were so many things he wanted to say... where to begin?

"You really are from the country, huh?" Tony chuckled, and his eyes went distant. Memories plaid freely across his face. "It's a kind of huge gambling house. I'm a gambler, remember?" He threw his dice, and they came up six-and-six. _"Mezzanotte,"_ he cursed and grimaced at the dice. "Not much of a gambler, but yeah. I actually grew up right across the street from a place like this. I spent most of my childhood watching people win big or lose it all. Come to think of it, I guess this kind of place does seem a bit like home..."

"So... what makes you think we're dead?" Link asked. In his mind, he was kicking himself brutally. He just couldn't bring himself to dive directly to the point.

"Are you kidding?" Tony gave another small laugh. "I may not remember much about what I was doing before I got here, but I remember it hurt. A lot. I'm willing to bet against any odds that you don't survive when it hurts like that."

"Is that all?" Link's laughter was awkward and nervous.

"Well, that... and then there's the thing over there, too." Tony nodded over his shoulder, drawing Link's attention to a set of mostly destroyed doors that were probably once the casino entrance. Just beyond the shattered portal, an intense white light blazed unrelentingly, casting sharp shadows into the ashen, ruined entryway. "As near as I can tell, that's 'the light' that people who nearly die are always talking about." Tony sighed, then smirked at Link's shocked, staggered expression. "At first I was too scared to approach it, but I've been in here for a while now. I'm starting to get more curious than scared. I figure as soon as this thing lets go of me, I can see what's on the other side."

Tony indicated his left shoulder, where he wore a small pelisse cape, its milky white expanse and extravagant gold embroidery covering only his left shoulder down to elbow height. Link wondered for a moment how it had taken him so long to notice it, especially since it stood out so starkly against the simple green herald's uniform Tony wore so comfortably. It didn't take a huge leap of the imagination for Link to recognize Arrika's pinion, and so finally the truth really started to come home for him.

"You know, I tried to take a closer look at that light earlier?" Tony was conversational again. Apparently, certain that he was already dead, his many fears and cares had truly melted away to insignificance. "This thing won't let me get anywhere near it! Of course, I can't get it off, either. I can't figure it out, since its not like its tied down or anything. I guess the afterlife doesn't have to make sense, right? Maybe this represents something I have to resolve in this _purgatorium_ before I can move on? I've been sitting here trying to think of what it could be. Do you have any ideas?"

"Yeah... Tony... I have an idea..." Link sucked in a breath and found his spine. "The truth is, I have a pretty good idea why we're both here."

"Really?" Tony seemed pleasantly surprised.

"I wasn't kidding earlier when I said we weren't technically dead. I know that I'm wounded, and I saw that you were wounded too. Rather than '_purgatorium,'_ or whatever, I think this is the brink of death. I'm not sure why we're _together_ here or why it looks this way," Link lied, "But I'm pretty much certain that this isn't any sort of afterlife."

"Wait... so... I'm not dead yet?" The note of hope in that question was almost enough to stop Link's heart. "That's great! I mean..." Tony took in Link's crestfallen image and allowed his sudden excitement to cool. "What's the catch?"

"Listen, Tony..." Link searched for words, "I've seen a lot of wounds in my time. The kind I got is bad... but I'll probably pull through. The kind you got..." he didn't have the heart to finish.

Tony's face fell. Then he sighed and smiled.

"Well, I guess it's a good thing I already made my peace then, isn't it?"

"But Tony, it's not like there's no hope!" Link tried, but hit a stone wall in the form of Tony's upraised hand.

"You don't have to sugarcoat it, Link." Tony tossed his dice again, rolling one-and-one. He didn't bother picking them up this time. "It's written all over your face. I'm done for." When he noticed the utter despondence Link was now showing, Tony added, "But hey, what a way to go, right?"

"You remember?" Link asked, reviving slightly from his depression.

"I remember assaulting a mafioso to escape from that basement I was tied up in." He grinned at the memory. "I remember rushing into a burning building to save a child. Well... I set the building on fire to begin with, but that was an accident. Anyway, I remember crawling through a dark sewage hell to rescue a small nation of imprisoned zoras. After that I..." Tony's forehead creased with the effort he spent trying to recall his final moments, "I think I went a bit overboard. But still, I'm sure I _must_ have gone down fighting. You don't get hurt the way I was by hiding under a rock until the danger passes by."

"I seriously doubt anyone could claim your final moments were anything less than _insanely_ heroic," Link agreed. He didn't know quite how Tony had managed to wind up in the same burnt-out crater where Arrika had found the remains of a crippled demon-bird-beast, but he really didn't feel as though he were lying when he'd said that.

After stating that simple assurance, there was a strained silence between them. Each realized that the time had come to exchange what might be their final words, and neither knew just what to say.

"You know, assuming I remember this when I come to," Link finally began, remembering to pretend like this was some sort of chance meeting in the antechamber to the afterlife, "I guess we shouldn't waste this opportunity. In case you don't make it, is there anything I can do for you? Any message I can give?"

"Don't have any family," Tony admitted, and Link suddenly realized he hadn't known that about his friend. "Don't have a woman either. Haven't got any debts I intend to honor. I guess, if you can tell that fish girl off for me, just for old time's sake-"

"Ah... Leeta..." Link stopped, choked up a bit, then just shook his head. Tony understood almost immediately. He spent a long moment examining the dice reading snake eyes on the table in front of him. He picked them up and rolled them again, scoring a one-and-two.

"I knew it..." he eventually mumbled. "I knew that if I didn't stop them from dragging her into that carriage that I would never see her again." He grinned a rueful grin. "Listen to me, prattling about my valorous deeds! If I'd just had the guts to..."

"Don't blame yourself." Link heard Arrika's words echoing I his ears as he took a moment to console his friend. "If anyone deserves blame, its me. I had several chances to send her home, and I was too soft to do her even that hard kindness. She bet on me being able to protect her... which I guess means you aren't the only terrible gambler in Romali."

"Nah..." Tony threw the dice again. They hit the far sideboard of the felt table and bounced back, rattling and spinning until one die landed on one and the other continued to spin. For a moment, it looked like it would land on six. Then it turned unexpectedly and landed on two instead. "That was a safe bet. The problem," Tony picked up the dice that had treated him so poorly, "is that the house stacks the odds against you."

Without warning, Tony dug his fingertips into the table's felt covering and began to rip it off. Wooden tokens spilled everywhere as he peeled the surface back. After a few furious seconds, the wooden surface under the felt was revealed. It was covered in indented circles and letters of an obviously magical nature. Withholding comment, Tony dropped the dice on the pattern directly, getting a two-and-one again. Five more rolls returned a twelve, two threes, and two twos.

"A damn dice-fixing charm! I guess I really can't be dead yet. What kind of afterlife has crooked _crapaud_ tables?" Before Link could say anything, Tony slapped him on the shoulder. "I know what you're thinking! You feel responsible, right? For my death? For Leeta's?"

"I..." Link held his tongue. He couldn't deny it.

"Link, I owe you more than I can ever account!" Tony shouted, as if he could drive away Link's melancholy with pure volume. "In these short weeks, you've been the best friend I've ever had. Besides that time you saved my life, something it seems I will never be able to repay, you inspired me to become something other than a spineless craven. Clearly, that didn't work out so well for me, but at least now I can face Dio with pride. Add in the way you helped me finally pull one over on these _bastardi, _and I really can't thank you enough!"

The last he said while indicating the cheating device hidden on the gambling table. Apparently the 'house advantage' was ingrained so thoroughly into Tony's psyche that it even appeared in his Home. How badly had fixed games hurt this man? How much pleasure had he gotten from fixing a bet and robbing the mafia in return?

"But Tony... if it weren't for meeting me..." Link persisted, though he was wavering.

"Then I would have been killed horribly to pay for my ill-gotten debts," Tony finished for him. "Link, _mi amigo_, I can say without reservation that it has been a true honor to have met you."

Link didn't know how to respond to that, so he just smiled. There was a sensation very much like a weight being lifted off his shoulders. Maybe, just maybe, he could forgive the Traveler's extreme methods after a parting gift like this.

"Tony, I-" Link began, only to be suddenly interrupted.

"Anthony Giovanni." A female voice, somewhat nervous and distant, echoed in from the brilliant light beyond the portal. "Can you hear me?"

"Holy Dio!" Tony shouted, eyes bulging toward the brightly lit doorway. "What was that?"

"Shit," Link realized a bit too late that he had put Arrika in charge of 'taking care' of Tony. No wonder the Traveler had been in such a hurry to send him on his way. Still, he'd said what he needed to say, hadn't he? Wasn't it time? "I think... that must mean your number is up."

"Why am I so surprised that they know my name?" Tony chuckled, but his face had gone pale. He stood up to begin edging toward the door, only to be caught by his shoulder by some invisible force. The pelisse was still holding him here. "Damn thing!" Tony snapped, pulling at it again.

"Hold on, I'm going to check this out," Link pushed Tony back into his seat by the table and walked over toward the bright light. If his intuition was correct, it was not the light to the other side, but rather, some sort of connection back to consciousness for Tony's ego to leave his Home. Hopefully that meant that... "Arrika?" Link whispered harshly into the blinding eternity beyond the broken doors. "It's Link. Tony says he's ready to go now. Could you... release him?"

With no idea whether that wild shot in the dark would work or not, Link wandered back over to the table where Tony was waiting. He took a seat next to his friend again and gave him a wan smile.

"I have a feeling you'll be on your way soon," Link said, although he couldn't bring himself to inject much confidence into his words. "You'll be facing the next great adventure, and I guess I'll be going back to face my injuries."

"Link?" Tony said, his tone pregnant with purpose. Link was all ears. "I've had a feeling since the day I met you that you were destined for something special." Tony picked up the dice and held them up between his extended fingertips. "But... destiny... its a bit like this, right?" He nodded at the dice-fixing charms carved into the _crapaud_ table. "Do me a favor and don't let the house edge ruin your game, alright?"

Tony punctuated that final request by flinging the dice across the casino and out into the ashen darkness of its ruined vastness. With a skip and rattle, they settled four-and-three. In the same instant, the pelisse cape on his shoulder evaporated into a cloud of downy feathers.

"Ha! It's gone!" Tony shouted. Then he collapsed to his knees. His complexion paled almost instantly to a deathly shade, and all around, the ruined casino began to slowly dissolve into a light as bright and merciless as the stark white void outside the entryway.

Link jumped out of his chair and took his friend by the hand.

"Thanks for everything Tony." Link might have had the tiniest bit of moisture in his eyes. "Really. And... goodbye."

"Beat the odds," Tony replied, his voice shaky as the final trickles of his life ebbed away. "_arrivederci_."

Tony's Home persisted for a few seconds more, and then Link was dumped back into the same uncertain eternity that had brought him there.

**Central Market Crossroads, Romali, The Confederation of Careda**

For a long moment, Arrika wasn't sure how to take a voice claiming to be Link emanating from Tony's comatose body. Then she remembered that this wasn't even close to the strangest thing she'd ever encountered, and decided to take it at face value. Link would just have to spend a good, long time explaining things to her satisfaction later.

Thus, with a silent prayer of benediction that was many times older than any current civilization she was aware of, Arrika gently brushed her right hand along Tony's intact left brow. The energy that described her pinion was easy to locate and just as easy to reclaim, and in an instant, the charming accessory materialized on her shoulder where it belonged. At virtually the same moment, Tony's body released a death rattle, his final breath holding a note of exceptional relief. He was gone.

Ziggy had stopped actively terrorizing the crowd some time ago, such that the closest elements were able to hear that mortal breath and see his sudden, pristine stillness. They immediately knew what had happened. This was why, rather than being amazed by the sudden appearance of a quarter-cape on the strange, costumed girl-child that had jumped the line with her huge guard dog, they instead began to wail in abject sorrow. That the miracle had come to and end was all they seemed to care about.

"You!" One of the impromptu clergy that had been managing the crowd's access to the miracle site overcame his fear and sadness quite rapidly by the generous application of blind rage. "What have you done to our saint?"

He brandished a lead pipe, quickly drawing the attention of untold dozens of other disgruntled pilgrims and focusing it squarely on Arrika. Ziggy began to growl, but Arrika waved him off. With a small signal, she urged him away, and after a grudging moment, he obeyed, dashing over debris piles no human could hope to navigate and vanishing over the nearby rooftops. Arrika took a final moment to touch her throat and implement a small trick her sister Beatrix had devised for commanding scattered mortal troops on a chaotic battlefield.

"**Children of Dio, hear me**." she spoke casually, except that the voice which projected from her mouth was gigantic. It was so loud that the nearest edge of the crowd was driven back, clutching their ears, while even those at the plaza's farthest reaches could hear her easily. The acoustics of the enclosed plaza were such that the booming words actually reflected around and must have seemed to come from every direction, enhancing her intended effect. Her final concern was only that her Romali was so archaic that they wouldn't be able to understand her.

"**Last night, foolish men released a great evil and allowed it to run rampant in your homes. By the efforts of many brave citizens of Romali, the evil tide was turned back. This man, Anthony Giovanni, whose miraculous vitality you have gathered to witness, is no saint. He is just one more who fought to guard his home and the lives of his neighbors. His sacrifice mirrors that of so many others who died last night, and none of them should ever be forgotten. If you truly wish to honor these brave people, spread out and reclaim your city from the madness that has gripped it**." As a final afterthought, even though it went against her better judgment, Arrika added, "**Dio will help those who help themselves, and he will reward those who treat others with kindness, fairness, and justice.**"

Satisfied that this message would be hard to misinterpret, and yet resigned to the fact that it inevitably would be twisted to meet the needs of some unscrupulous, power-hungry group of manipulators, Arrika returned her voice to normal. The strain of using that small bit of magic was greater than she'd anticipated, and she still needed to make her grand exit. With the crowd beginning to press in around her, still unsure whether to hate her or revere her, Arrika took one last look at Tony's shattered body. Despite her statements to the mob, he was doubly-sure to be canonized now, and that meant his body would likely be ripped to shreds so that each little bit could serve as a relic to draw pilgrims and their money to various remote shrines and temples. Tony deserved better than that, and so Arrika resolved to send him off with an even better funeral pyre than the lamp oil factory that had failed to consume him the night before.

"Are you an angel?" one of the less thoroughly riled female pilgrims shouted, and the note of hysterical desperation in her voice cut Arrika to the bone. Rather than answer, Arrika took a knee beside Tony's body.

Kneeling beside her target, Arrika forced roughly half the power she had left directly into her pinion. In the blink of an eye, a pair of translucent wings grew from nothing to a twenty-five foot span, bursting from her back like twin phantasmal streamers of white silk. The near edge of the observing crowd barely had time to gasp in shock before the wings spread, lifted, and beat downward once. A circular shock wave of wind blasted out in all directions simultaneously, knocking back the crowd, and Arrika rocketed upward like a crossbow bolt. At three hundred feet and climbing, Arrika turned herself back toward the ground and readied her blade. With wrist motions that barely seemed to budge her sword at all, she began to draw a tiny knot in the air beneath her, a tracing of white light tracking where the blade had passed. The knot grew steadily more complex, but did not grow any larger. Roughly five seconds after she lifted off, just as she reached the apex of her leap, she thrust her sword at the knot one final time, launching an attack at the ground with all of her remaining strength.

Back on the ground, most of the crowd anywhere near the target zone hadn't even finished the process of being buffeted backward by the gust of wind that had launched Arrika into the sky. That meant there was no danger of accidentally harming a bystander when her enormous illusionary blade rose came streaming down out of the sky like the finger of an angry god. Sequential waves of imperceptible force hit the crater encircling Tony's body like successive sheets of cutting rain. The tight groupings of slicing force actually agitated the soil so thoroughly that by the time the final wave hit, a bubble of energy had built up underneath the target zone. The final wave burst that bubble, and a column of earth erupted some fifty feet skyward. Earth was perhaps too kind a term for it, because it had been so thoroughly pureed by Arrika's attack that no particle larger than a grain of sand remained of where Tony had once been.

Satisfied that Tony had received a fitting pyre, and that her shrunken combat form could still perform some of her more complex attacks, Arrika aimed her descent to come down on the opposite side of the dust cloud she'd created. To the onlooking crowd, it would seem as though she'd vanished into the heavens. In reality, after her final course adjustment, her powers were spent, and she plummeted to the earth in an uncontrolled spiral.

Right around the time she was nearing terminal velocity, no more than thirty feet off the ground, Arrika managed to squeeze one last drop of power into her pinion. Her wings again sprouted and spread widely, reducing her downward speed to almost nothing in the space of fifteen feet. She fell the last fifteen feet normally, landing hard. Her transformation dissolved the next instant, and she was left in her usual fencer's gown, lying face down on the pavement of an empty ally a few streets away from the plaza she'd just left, exhausted. Indeed, she wasn't even able to maintain a spiritual form independent of her sword, and anyone watching would have been treated to the unsettling sight of a little girl dissolving into a puddle of black ooze. Apparently not even the amorph could hold her if she lacked the fundamental strength to project a phantasmal body outside the blade.

The amorph quailed. Deprived of its favorite insubstantial molding pattern and separated from its lupine master, it had no idea what to do. Eventually it simply wrapped itself around Arrika's sword and transformed itself to blend in to its environment. It took on the shape of a shattered piece of timber and blended seamlessly into the dozens strewn across the streets by the collapse of several nearby buildings. Not too much later, Wolf Link arrived to collect them, easily sniffing out the camouflaged amorph and intimidating it into hiding again within his thick fur, sword and all. Lacking anything more urgent, the vast beast then swept out to patrol the city again. The asses of many villains had yet to be marred with the enormous fangs of justice.

Meanwhile, in the nearby central plaza, something strange was happening. Not long after Arrika's dramatic exit, the crowd, too, began to disperse. Those who had some or all of their senses divided into groups and got to work. The women formed teams for herding together and calming those too deranged to work and rallied behind healers and magicians to nurse the wounded. The men divided into labor crews for clearing wreckage and putting out lingering fires or formed militia patrols to protect everyone else from roving bands of looters and the violently insane. All of this took place against the protests of those who had declared themselves clergy of the New Cult of Dio, who would much rather they all stayed, at least until they had signed over all their worldly assets in exchange for salvation amid the lingering air of fear and uncertainty clinging about the city.

It was, for lack of a better term, a miraculous development. Along with the arrival later that day of a huge expeditionary force consisting of armed militia from the countryside and the regular forces of several local Dons, this resurgence of community spirit and civic responsibility signaled the end of the first phase of the crisis that decimated Romali. Only time would tell if the 'Jewel of the West' would be able to survive and recover from the nightmare that had annihilated one third of its population and the vast majority of its economy in a single night.

**Hyrule Merchant's Guildhall, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda leaned forward against the guardrail of the balcony overlooking the grand ballroom of the Hyrule Merchant's Guildhall and felt a certain tickling satisfaction as she watched her efforts come to fruition. The gala below her was in full swing, with every noteworthy personage of Hyrule Castle Town present and deeply engaged in that basest of all human communication: gossip. What's more, thanks to a few small seeds planted by Zelda through a few whispers in the right ears by her agents, the rumors breeding and multiplying on the tongues of this evening's guests were all items of her own invention. By this time tomorrow, the whole of Castle Town would be talking not of the mysterious lights flashing from Zelda's balcony at the Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, but of her secret paramour and the possibility of a royal wedding in the near future.

Not for the first time, Zelda wondered at how easy it was to manipulate a large group of people. Without even engaging any of her Triforce powers, she had effortlessly changed the topic on everyone's lips from dangerous rumors about her experimentation in dark magic, to completely harmless speculation about which noble dandy was secretly rendezvousing with her in the dead of night. If she had to endure a few outraged stares and salacious, filthy speculation about her personal relationships for this stratagem to work out, then so be it. It was better than seeing eyes filled with barely suppressed fear and hate as people took wild and imaginative guesses at what sort of bizarre sorcery she was dabbling in to generate such excessive light shows every few nights. Witches and wizards made useful things, and so were barely tolerated in this land where the only sorcerers in the oral tradition were the ones trying to enslave the kingdom. Meanwhile, gossip about her potential sex life was fairly harmless, in the grand scheme of things. Really she only worried the rumors would mix, and people would speculate about her deviant, magically-enhanced sex-life.

Of course, there would be protests. A certain kind of conservative, usually older men, would certainly have something to say about a monarch who wasn't male having a social life that wasn't celibate, and complaints along these lines could allow these rumors to undermine her authority. Rather than fearing this faction, Zelda was counting on them to stoke the fires of the rumor and really push those whispers about black magic firmly into the 'yesterday's news' category. Meanwhile, anyone who tried to make real trouble for her would find her a difficult opponent to embarrass, even without bringing her powers into the equation. Although it would no-doubt come as a shock to these men, historical precedent was on her side, and everything they might raise as a complaint was taken care of by royal privilege and a few simple precautions.

Historically, Queens and Crown Princesses of Hyrule had fooled around before and during marriage at least as often as Kings and Princes. A combination of birth control magics and medicines and the Hylian Royal Dynasty's tradition of legitimacy by blood, not wedlock, made bastard children both rare and a moot point besides. As long as the children were hers, a difficult point to contest with a female monarch, and the father could be reasonably proven a noble, which was only somewhat more problematic, her children were legitimate heirs. Thus, if anyone tried to question the legitimacy of her future children based on today's rumors, or disparage her character for allowing such rumors to come up at all, Zelda would be ready to smack them down. Before that, however, they could explain to her, to her face, in front of witnesses, that they didn't believe her when she said she would remain a virgin until marriage. She prayed, truly prayed to her goddesses, that some fool would dare. She wasn't about to get herself knocked up, especially since her lover was a total fabrication, and without a bastard to wave under her nose, who could dare challenge her word?

At the same time these conservatives complained, but not _too_ loudly, anyone who wasn't institutionally hypocritical was busy speculating about which eligible noble bachelor Zelda's paramour could be and what their chances were of witnessing a royal wedding in the near future. Such speculations were sweeter than the most powerful drug to a certain kind of courtier, and might as well have been the manna of heaven to the wives and daughters of the merchant class, and together they would make these rumors the talk of the town in no time at all. Then, depending on her future needs, she could either string them along with further strategic leaks of romantic details, completely derail the rumor mill with equally delicious news of a royal breakup, or... what?

Zelda bit her lip, her mood suddenly souring. The truth was, before she was done, she was going to have to pick a suitably noble fellow and use him to make a royal heir... perhaps even several heirs. Logically, this meant she'd have to be intimate with him potentially dozens of times for each heir. The thought did not particularly thrill her. She was in the enviable position of having no imminent political needs dire enough to necessitate immediate marriage to someone she hardly knew, so there was that... but so what? Even the high quality sons of noble families tended to be self-important pricks, and the window for finding her intellectual equal grew smaller every hour, so quickly was her mind expanding these days. Could she even have a real relationship with a man when every human on earth was subject to her absolute mental domination at her merest whim? And as for picking some suitable pretty-boy as a sperm donor, there was a problem there, too.

Essentially, ever since Zelda had met Link, even the Hylian men who kept in shape seemed like laughable cream puffs. Even Reanalds Jr., arguably the most beautiful human being in Hyrule and sexual fantasy of every woman from fourteen to fifty who'd never heard him open his mouth, seemed like a foppish nancyboy after knowing Link. Somehow, a chiseled jaw and a smile that turned girls insides into butterflies and honey paled next to Link's air of constant danger and body like a steel monument to perfect human proportions. If you add to that his inherently gentle nature and the emotional vulnerability and depth he'd shown during their many long conversations, and it was only natural that she'd feel something for him, and nothing at all for any of the other young men she saw. But were her feelings for him really all that strong? Was that why she didn't feel the slightest enthusiasm for the reality of her future marriage and children?

Her logical mind protested this trite answer, and before she knew it, Zelda found that she was debating herself on the subject. She had only danced around it before, considering all the nice distractions she'd had to deal with, but now she really began to examine her feelings. Glancing down into the crowd below, Zelda quickly located the younger attendees by their resplendent self-presentation as they attempted to impress both peers and parents with their eligibility. She found a particularly charming young man in a small circle of very interested young ladies and considered him in detail. He had a fit body and a cute face, and the young women flocking around him in their bulbous and frilly ballgowns seemed to fancy him a great deal. By dint of great effort, Zelda forced one cycle of her mind to abandon all critical thought and considered the young man as a purely physical specimen while another cycle monitored her vitals and the third coordinated the experiment.

Just by looking at him, Zelda felt nothing. There was no elevated heart rate, no pupil dilation, and no discernible response anywhere else in the parts of the human body that were not under conscious control. Deciding to step it up, Zelda cast the handsome fellow as the hero in the sort of romantic fantasy that had given her fits of delight as late as five years ago, when she was a carefree thirteen year old girl with a loving family and a peaceful imagined future to fill with heart-pounding imagined romances. Unsurprisingly, the thought of him as prince charming to her damsel in distress was more amusing than anything else.

As a final gambit, she undressed him with her eyes and cast him in a fantasy of a much less innocent nature. She didn't exactly have a huge well of experience to construct the fantasy from, but her father had collected filthy Caredan romance novels, and she'd paged through a few as a lark while helplessly imprisoned by Zant... had it really been less than a year ago? The flowery conceits used to describe the wanton carnal relations between strapping princes and pouty-lipped village girls had done little to conceal the graphic mechanics to which they referred. The detailed illustrations had also been highly illuminating in that regard. In any case, it was not difficult to construct in her mind the sort of pornographic situation that would have left a younger Zelda blushing from the tips of her pointed ears to the edges of her modest bosom. And yet, her body responded to these thoughts with intense indifference.

After pausing a moment to consider these results, Zelda began to repeat the experiment over and over again, trying to increase her sample size and account for factors like body type and age. Fifteen minutes later, she was beginning to think that she wasn't physically attracted to anyone of marriageable age or otherwise who had deigned to attend the gala. Fifteen minutes after that, she was certain of it. Finally, Zelda brought to her mind her most recent memory of Link from their last face-to-face meeting at the cliff-side balcony of Reanalds Mansion. Of course, just picturing him didn't do anything for her, so she cast him as a pillar of strength she could cling to in an uncertain world and quite naturally... well, no, she still didn't feel anything. Zelda hesitated then. Plucking up courage, she inserted Link into the same sexual fantasy that had fallen flat with so many other male leads pressed naked against her. When she still felt nothing, she heightened the fantasy with every sordid detail she could dredge up, actually shocking herself with some of the filthy scenarios that came to mind in her desperation.

"Shhh..." Zelda hissed, forcibly wiping her mind of all that filth and stalking away from the balcony edge in a huff of frustration that barely covered a rising panic. Instead of appealing to lust, then, Zelda remembered her long conversations with Link, their camaraderie during the battles they'd cooperated through, and her desperate efforts to protect him from that dark thing he'd battled just before the blank area in her memory the night before. The warmth that arose in her body with these memories was a staggering relief, and she expanded on it by thinking fondly of Auru, Ashei, and all her friends and allies in her personal court and administration. She found she cared a great deal for all of them, and the fact that this was still true was a balm that warmed her chilled soul.

When the chill fully dissipated, Zelda frowned. While it was a relief that she could still care about people who were important to her, the deadpan way her body was reacting to thoughts of intimacy was completely unnatural. Had something in her changed? There had been all those magical shenanigans last night, but she'd been so distracted by the expansion of her powers, she hadn't noticed anything else. She'd escaped the party on pretense of exhaustion, but the truth was, Zelda had felt just great since she'd awoken from that strange petrifaction she'd seen in the memories she'd read and replaced the other day. Mildly concerned, Zelda made sure her guards had their eyes focused on the narrow approaches to her private, second-floor, balcony alcove, then checked her body as best she could in her tight regalia without making a spectacle of herself. She found very quickly that her body still responded to physical stimulus in the natural way, so why then was the thought of intimacy leaving her so cold?

Below, the dance music came to a stop and a sudden blaring of horns called for the attention of all present, forcing Zelda to put that line of questioning on hold. Stepping back up to the balcony, she saw it was the Master of the Merchant's Guild, one Leon Trusis, who was about to speak.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, and Her Esteemed Majesty," he orated, "thank you for attending tonight's gala. As a special treat, the Kakariko Province Development Board has sponsored a demonstration of that region's famous fireworks for our viewing pleasure. I would direct anyone interested out to the veranda, the rear patio, or any east-facing window. They will be launched from just outside the east walls in roughly one-half hour. Thank you, and enjoy."

There was a great commotion as people began to converse excitedly all at once. Despite her concerns, Zelda found herself intrigued by the prospect of fireworks. The strife of recent years had made fireworks production virtually impossible, and the fact that Kakariko Province had rebuilt enough to manage some was either surprisingly good news, or an excellent marketing ploy by the KPDB. Perhaps all the relief funds she'd finally been able to funnel there were already bearing fruit in the form of revived industry? She could only hope. In any case, this was no time to be enjoying fireworks. Only the goddesses knew what was going on with her body right now, and she wouldn't be satisfied until she pried the secret out of them for herself. It was time to retire someplace private and really analyze what all changes might have come over her body, now that she was finally getting comfortable with what had happened to her mind.

"Your Majesty?" Donald, Zelda's chief steward, appeared at her shoulder without her noticing. It was an obnoxious habit of his, and the middle-aged man allowed a smile to play under his impressive mustache as he appreciated her annoyance. "Per Your Majesty's instructions, I have deflected all requests for an audience that have arrived since Your Majesty took her leave of the gathering. However, this most recent request is from Guildmaster Trusis himself. He has invited Your Majesty to view the fireworks from his private rooftop garden along with many other community leaders. I thought it prudent to bring this invitation to Your Majesty's attention."

Zelda immediately gleaned several things from this statement. First of all, she knew he thought there were prying ears, since he never bothered with linguistic gymnastics like third person address when it was only the inner circle and guards within earshot. Second, he had picked up a sense of deeper importance behind the invitation, or else his standing order to deflect such entreaties would have prevented her from ever even hearing about it until the post-event report.

Careful not to show any break in her expression, just in case there were eyes to go with those prying ears, Zelda considered her options. Honestly, a deeper investigation of her body was not that urgent. She had only even discovered what strangeness there was by chance, and in a field that had no bearing on any pressing challenges she faced. Meanwhile, her handling of the city's merchant elite was still in a critical stage. If she was to maintain her current commitment to resolving the city's economic stagnation without resorting to any more mind control than she had already, rather rashly applied, she was going to have to take invitations like this very seriously.

"You may tell them..." Zelda forced herself to smile, "that I would be delighted to partake of this special diversion in their company. Please clear matters with the guard detail and arrange transportation. It would be inexcusable to delay the overall spectacle just to allow me time to safely reach Master Trusis' lovely manse."

Donald smiled again, understandably happy that she put such stock in his intuition. With that, the stodgy fellow turned, his tailcoat flapping, and set off to organize matters. Zelda was left to ponder her approach to an evening in close private contact with the leaders of the community. Mostly this amounted to finding some way to resist the urge to reach into their skulls and rearrange their priorities to suit her needs. She was determined to not be 'that kind' of Queen, although it was questionable how long that determination could last in the face of the sort of self-absorbed, self-interested, and downright selfish assholes that were running Hyrule's markets right now. She'd already looked inside their minds, she knew what kind of people they were, and convincing them to accept less guaranteed money now for a promise of a brighter future for all of Hyrule was an onerous prospect indeed.

If Zelda had still been dedicating cycles of her mind to her little experiment, she would have noticed a distinct increase in her pulse, a dilation of her eyes, and a great many other small tells to indicate her physical arousal. The very idea of the sheer challenge of selling some hybrid of mercantilism and free-trade capitalism to entrenched beneficiaries of cronyism and isolationist conspiracies was arousing her in a way that all of Hyrule's most attractive noble sons couldn't begin to manage.

Thus did the Goddesses motivate their tools.

**Arrika's Home, The Astral Plane**

When Link regained senses he could fathom, he was standing in a large, extremely clean, rather bare, circular room. It was a credit to how hectic his recent life had been that it took him a few dazed moments to recall that this distinctive place was Arrika's Home, her soul's nest within his own. From the central raised, circular stage, to the huge stretches of bare carpet, to the odd clusters of strange, though well-used furniture, everything was exactly as it had been when he'd left... how long ago? Between the time he'd spent senseless in the storm of spiritual damage outside and the two indescribable periods of disorientation that he'd endured to reach Tony and return, his last stop here could have been an hour ago or a week past. Of course, he'd reached Tony before the end, so it couldn't have been that long...

"Uhg, what a day," Link sighed, feeling suddenly exhausted. With mounting fatigue, he stumbled toward the edge of the room with the low chairs and short table, quickly collapsing into one of the cushy, divinely comfortable seats.

The furniture was so low to the ground that Link's dangling hands rested on the carpet, allowing his fingers to bump into something that had been discarded there. He grabbed at the thing and idly picked it up for a closer look. He found himself clueless. It took Link a good ten seconds of furious concentration before he could place the smooth, eight-inch rod of mysterious gray material, and when he did, he almost kicked himself.

"Right... the 'controller,'" Link took a small but undeniable pride in remembering the odd thing. It was a rather impressive feat, especially considering how completely his thoughts had been muddled by everything that had happened in the unknown length of time since Arrika's abridged attempt to comfort him over his suddenly immaterial existence. "Now... I wonder how I get it to bring back that window that shows what the wolf-me is seeing..."

No sooner had Link mumbled his desire out loud, than did the controller respond. An eight-by-ten foot rectangle appeared on the thin air about six feet in front of his chair and presented him with a wolf's-eye view of the rooftops of Romali's commercial district, complete with audio of the overpowering mess of noises assaulting the wolf's sensitive ears. The hulking presence of _Il Cattedrale de Dio_ dominated the scene, with the city's vast central plaza stuffed with citizens spreading out under it. The scene immediately reminded Link of Tony's passing, stinging him badly enough to keep him from noticing a familiar voice threaded into the noise that came through with the picture.

"...and he will reward those who treat others with kindness, fairness, and justice," spoke a voice that could only have been Arrika's, easily recognizable despite being badly distorted by over-amplification and multiple echoes. Link noticed it just in time for the scene to get wild.

Over the next few seconds, Link wondered if he might have some clue what others felt when they watched him do impossible things. The wolf did not have a great vantage point to observe her actions from his perch on a rooftop three blocks off the central plaza, but his sharp eyes followed her when she was visible, making it impossible for Link to miss the sheer magnitude of her feat. The way she cannoned up into the sky was matched in awesomeness only by the incredible flower of invisible destruction she sent to the ground in her wake, a flush of distorted air the only brief clue to its passage before the spectacular explosion. It didn't take him more than a moment to recognize the explosion that followed as Tony's funeral pyre, and though he _didn't_ recognize its necessity, he found the ostentatious eruption a fitting send-off. A moment later, the wolf's eyes were focused on a small dot that was falling fast on the city-side of the oddly vertical dust plume left by the explosion.

"Holy Din, that's Arrika!" Link realized, perhaps a bit late. "She can fly now, right? I just _saw_ her fly! That was the whole point of the damn 'pinion' thing! Why is she falling?"

The wolf whose eyes Link was borrowing seemed to come to the same conclusion, and suddenly, the point of view they were using launched toward the falling figure. Of course, there was no chance of catching Arrika before her urgent meeting with the ground, not from their distant vantage, and especially not with the supernatural wolf moving at a sluggish pace hardly comparable even to a mortal wolf's speed. He seemed almost too drained of energy to move at all, and they had hardly made it to the ground and around the corner before Arrika disappeared behind the rooftops, approaching the street with terrifying velocity. Helpless, Link could only brace himself for one more failure, holding out hope that Arrika's supernatural nature would protect her.

There was a pause that extended beyond the point where Arrika should have hit the ground. It lasted just long enough to make Link think things might be okay. Then, just when he started to hope, Arrika's Home was plunged into absolute and utter darkness.

"Well... _shit."_ Link stood for a moment in darkness so perfect that he could not see the tip of his own nose, stumped. "Okay, Link, let's reason this out. It's too dark to see... what now?"

The inky void offered no answer. Lacking anything approaching a clue, Link found himself reverting to his adventuring experience.

"Fire. I need fire to make light. Better yet: a lantern. So... how do I get a lantern? Arrika lit this place by making those weird orbs on the damn _ceiling_ glow, I'm not going to just trip over a lamp while stumbling around this cavern in the dark..."

The silent darkness devoured his rhetorical reasoning, mocking his impotence.

"Of course!" Link gripped his forehead and rubbed his face to try and expunge the taint of his own idiocy. "It's the astral realm, stupid! I can _make_ a lamp!"

Remembering his crash-course in psion from the Traveler, Link proceeded to do just that. He recalled his trusty lantern, picturing in his mind every facet he could dredge from his memory, from the smell of its burning oil to the unique weight it placed on his hand or hip. Right around the time he started to imagine the sound of its metal hinges creaking, he felt an actual weight pull upon his fingers, and he knew he had succeeded. With a practiced motion that he could perform even in the darkest of blackout conditions, Link cranked the lamp's flint striker, igniting the oil wick and flushing Arrika's Home with new light.

Rather than the odd room, with its mismatch of coziness and sterility, Link found himself in the center of a white void that extended in all directions as far as the light could reach into the darkness. For a dizzying moment, he thought it might actually be infinite. Then he saw the door through which he had first entered Arrika's Home, and through which he had made his fateful sortie into the storm of his own spiritual trauma. When he saw that, his mind finally got some dimensional references to work with, such that he could finally perceive the true nature of his surroundings.

He was still in Arrika's Home, and it was the exact same huge round room, except now it was utterly featureless and devoid of anything other than blank white surfaces and a connecting point to his own Home. Link suffered from a bit of vertigo as he tried to resist the optical illusion of infinity, and succeeded only when a glint of reflected light drew his gaze to a point out beyond his lantern's immediate reach. With nothing better to do, he moved to investigate.

"Nayrue, Farore, and Din!" Link swore, as he approached the source of the reflected light. What he found, the one and only thing to remain now that Arrika's Home was stripped bare, was the mummified corpse of a child pinned to an alter by the thin, mirror-bright length of Arrika's sword, _Bijou Blanc, _thrust through its heart. Once again, Link was assaulted by the unfamiliar chill of mortal terror as he gazed upon the morbid tableau, and he hesitated to approach, looking away as he tried to gather himself. It took him a moment—plucking up courage was not something he usually had to worry about—but he eventually managed to approach the alter for a closer look.

Further investigation revealed little. The sword was Arrika's sword, the body was very, very dead and desiccated beyond recognition, and the alter was little more than a solid, coffin-sized slab of rectangular marble with perfectly smooth sides and dangerously sharp corners, but lacking in adornment or carvings of any kind. The mummified corpse was wearing a stained black rag that might have been a fine black fencer's gown in a bygone era, and a few strands of long blond hair clung to its horribly discolored, paper-dry, pruned-up skin-husk. These features were the only clue to its identity, but astonishingly, it was still enough for Link to identify the remains.

"Arrika..." Link sighed, as the various wisps of her past she'd let slip came back to him all at once. She had mentioned a sacrifice to her father, Smith, the forge god, but somehow Link had never allowed himself to imagine something quite so graphic. Staggered by the sudden implications of his discovery, Link was forced to lean on the alter for support.

The moment he touched the smooth, cold marble, there was a sharp pain in his skull. The symbolic image of a triangle the Traveler had carved on his psyche to connect his consciousness to the Triforce blazed brilliantly into his mind's eye. Before he knew what was happening, Link felt a great wave of energy leave his body, draining away his strength and driving him to his knees. He groaned, suddenly weakened, and dropped his lamp from numb fingers. It promptly vanished back into the nothingness from which he'd imagined it, plunging Arrika's Home back into utter darkness.

The darkness barely had a chance to even begin ridiculing Link's flub before it was pierced by a fresh glow from the alter that was sucking Link's strength away. More specifically, the glow came from hundreds of thousands of small symbols that had not been apparent before they'd lit up, and from the blade and gems of _Bijou Blanc_. With his vision blurring out as unconsciousness threatened, Link was just barely able to drive the cursed triangle from his mind, once again achieving a psychological state that did not include three-sided geometric thingies. When the t-word was safely sealed away, the draining stopped, and he was free to black out, which he did.

Link woke suddenly, a soft hand on his shoulder jerking him back to consciousness with a gentle touch. Eyes that did not want to focus found Arrika's charming features looking down on him with concern while the aggregate of his other muddled senses told him he was back in her Home as it had been when he first knew it, bizarre but comfortable. There was a ringing in his ears, and it took him an extra moment more to recognize it as speech.

"Are you okay?" Arrika was asking him. It was an excellent question, and he spent a full thirty seconds making sure he knew the correct answer before trying to speak.

"I'm not sure," Link eventually settled on a non-committal response. "Was that some kind of astral realm-brand waking nightmare, or did I just get vamped by a stone bearing a sword and a mummy?"

"You saw that?" Arrika asked, drawing away from him with enough haste to get his attention.

"I'm not sure what I saw..." Link sighed, "but it seems you know something about it. What the hell just happened in here, Arrika?"

Arrika did not answer right away. By the war of emotions playing across her face and all through her body language, there was a strong question as to whether or not she would answer at all. Eventually, however, she managed to give him a weak grin, taking a sudden interest in the complex lacework of her conservative green dress—the same one she'd donned earlier when he'd found her casual clothes too distracting.

"Ah, yeah... about that..." Arrika forced herself to meet his gaze, "that's my anchor to eternity. Most of my Home was set within yours when we completed the contract... but if it _all_ combined with yours, I would die when you die. Just as that door," she nodded to the large portal now sealed against and ocean's tide, "links your Home and Mine, that sad monument links my Home to the part of me that is forever within the sword. You could call that the cornerstone of my existence; it's as good a metaphor as any."

"But why did it look like that?" Link asked, "and why did it drain me?"

"I exhausted myself again," Arrika began, looking embarrassed to admit it, "flying around and blasting things, I squandered all the power the wolf-you lent me, and was forced to enter hibernation to preserve myself. My Home responded to that injury just as yours has responded to your injury. That was what you saw. Since I'm awake now, I can only assume I got some more power from someplace. I guess I have you to thank for that."

"Great!" Link acknowledged her refusal to talk about the morbid edifice he'd seen by letting the subject drop, "I take a huge risk, it pays off, I learn more than I ever hoped to about the Triforce, and the first useful thing I make it do is a complete accident!"

"Wait," Arrika perked up, pleasantly surprised to escape a grilling about the almost literal skeleton in her closet, "what are you talking about? For that matter, how the hell did you transfer power to me? Your wolf avatar seemed pretty tapped out."

"Come on, this is a long story." Link stood up, and found that it posed him to trouble. He was energized, his exhaustion seemingly cleared away by his impromptu power nap. To feel this way after that agonizing draining was counter-intuitive enough to cause him a moment's concern. "We'd... better have a seat."

Over the next few hours, Link filled Arrika in on his wild journey through the storm of his injured spirit, his tortuous encounter with the mysterious Traveler, and his round-trip ticket to meet Tony at the brink of death. He spoke slowly, the two of them discussing all he'd learned, as well as everything he suspected he'd been lied to about. The discussion took longer than it might have, mainly due to their mutual mental exhaustion, but also because they had the feed from Wolf Link's eyes playing, and the way he kept breaking the limbs of murderers and rapists was highly distracting.

"You don't trust her," Arrika said, more as a statement than a question. This Traveler character made her nervous on all sorts of levels, but mainly because the sort of psion talent it took to forcibly eject someone from their own Home and astral project them into another stranger's Home was both rare and intimidating. The return trip was more natural, since this was where Link's spirit belonged, it would come back naturally when Tony's Home disappeared with his death. But there too, he'd appeared in Arrika's Home, which had to be the Traveler's doing again. Arrika had never even heard of someone with that kind of skill in Psion.

"She openly admitted that most everything she said to me was a lie to manipulate my reactions. To this very moment, I _still_ don't know if she's crazy, or just a raging bitch. Of course I don't trust her." Link had an expression of severe disgust as he remembered his time with the Traveler. "But she's my only knowledgeable connection to this whole Triforce mess. If she's really going to teach me how to master it, I can't afford to pass up this opportunity."

"Okay, Link," Arrika sat back in her low chair and smirked at a projection showing the wolf she'd named Ziggurat busting into a barricaded building and terrorizing the rioters inside so fiercely that they fled over their own barriers and into the waiting hands of the militia soldiers besieging them. "I won't try to tell you how to handle this. Just remember something: this 'Traveler' appeared when you were at your most vulnerable, when you were beyond my reach to help you, and in a place that very few are qualified to visit with impunity. Timing like that doesn't happen by coincidence. At the very least, she has been watching you. Before you give her free reign to shape your connection to the Triforce, you need to be sure of her motives."

Link nodded, and the two of them sat in amiable silence for a while, enjoying the spectacle of Ziggurat's antics of justice. He seemed to have recovered his energy just as Link and Arrika had, and provided them with seemingly endless entertainment. There was something about a pony-sized predator imbued with supernatural powers laying into people who really deserved it that brought a smile to one's face. Ziggy had even begun to let offenders off with fairly minor wounds now that there were 'official' authorities around to apprehend his victims and give them trials and 'official' executions. That really took the moral ambiguity out of vigilantism, and left nothing put pure comic value in every ass-bite dealt out, every gonad crush administered, and every soiled pair of pants that Ziggy caused.

"So, are we going to talk about the mummy?" Link asked. By Arrika's suddenly pensive expression, the question was not entirely unexpected. Rather than answer immediately, she posed her friend a question of her own.

"Link, what do you suppose constitutes humanity?" Arrika let her eyes fall away from the view of Ziggurat biting through the ropes of another female victim of the riot and considered eternity instead. The eternity she had lived through was once again written upon her features, and it was impossible to mistake her for the child her body suggested.

"That's a pretty heavy question," Link sighed, "but, unfortunately, not one I've been able to avoid thinking about myself." Link started to chew on his knuckle. This was not comfortable territory for him. "I'm hoping it has something to do with recognizing and identifying with the feelings of other humans. If it has something to do with what your body is made of instead... then I'm probably in trouble."

"Right, well, I was talking more about origins." Arrika smiled. "Arrika lo dim Rospalcino sert Belturgolo... that was my name. Or rather, that was the name of an exceptionally pure, noble, and divinely-favored young beauty who lived around this region of the world during the Genesis Times. When Smith, the forge god, demanded sacrifices in trade for his help constructing anti-demon weapons, she was chosen as the tribute of the western gods. She was taken to an alter much like the one you saw and slain quite callously so that one of Smith's grand weapons would have a personality to go with all the power of the western gods, forever."

"That scene you found while I was forced into hibernation was what I consider my first memory. It is what I saw the day I was born, and it is forever carved into my consciousness. It is highly symbolic of my eternal existence, and so naturally, my subconscious found a way to incorporate it into my Home. It always shows up here when I run up against the limits of my immortal nature."

"I'm not sure I understand," Link said, finally locating the absolute limit of his ability to adapt to crazy shit tossed his way. "Are you saying that you're _not_ Arrika?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Arrika had a somewhat manic grin. "I have all Arrika's memories, all her mannerisms, and I look exactly like her. Yet, Arrika was a human child who died millenniums—_plural—_ago. I am manifestly not a human in the 'what I'm made of' sense, and as for the rest, isn't that just philosophy?" She paused to rub her forehead and wonder at her sudden urge to share. Since the day she'd been reduced to a shade and forced to contract with mortals just to get by, she'd never spoken of this with anyone.

"This was never something I worried about back at the start. I thought I was Arrika in a new body, blessed with a unique chance to serve my creators. The battles were incessant, and none of us really had a chance to stop and wonder at what had been done in the name of preserving existence. Of course, I've had all too much time to think about it since then. Now I can never shake the question: am I Arrika with a new body, or am I a weapon with just enough Arrika squeezed in to be self-propelled and pleasant to interact with?" She let that one hang in the air for a moment. "Of course, there is no real answer. Philosophy is a bitch that way. All I know for certain is that I have a mission that will never end, a duty that I am incapable of abandoning, and the rest of time to yet endure my assigned tasks."

"So that's why you get so hot when you're labeled a talking sword?" Link asked, finding some insight at last. "Because you're afraid it might be true?"  
"Yes." Arrika nodded. "And that's why I was so happy when I learned you were the Hero of the Triforce. As I said before, if anyone could relate to to my situation, it would be you guys. More than anyone else I've ever even heard of, you exist at the bridge point between human weapon and weapon with human traits. Hell, it was a conversation with the first Hero that planted the seed of doubt in me that I'm boring you with now."

It was silent between them for a long time after that. Back in the real world, a pitched battle was taking place in the streets of Romali between a mob of looters in the red light district and a mob of vigilantes that had turned out to protect their homes and businesses. Ziggurat arrived and scattered them all, saving goddesses know how many lives by chasing them all back into hiding.

"Thank you for telling me," Link broke the silence. He really meant it, he _really_ appreciated her trust, and she appreciated his sincere gratitude. Just then, the two of them had a Moment. "But you know, there's something I thought of recently that's given me a tiny bit of comfort." Arrika perked up, interested to say the least. "That is, you and I, even besides one another, are not alone in blurring the lines of humanity. For me, there's the legacy of past Heroes, and I suppose those possessed by the other thirds of the Triforce as well. For you, it's..."

"My sisters," Arrika finished for him. "So what you're saying is, even if I'm just a layer of personality makeup on a war machine, at least I have a handful of other war machines to share eternity with?"

"Cold comfort, I guess, but it's something, right?" Link smiled, and much of the tension in Arrika's Home started to disperse. "You know, I haven't forgotten my promise to help you search for your sisters. In fact, if you recall what we were talking about the other day—just before it became a waking nightmare—I think I know where to go for a lead. That jackass Britoli knew something about you before I even showed him the sword. He's a gigantically wealthy weapons collector... so what do you want to bet he knows every single legend about divine swords that exists in living memory?"

"Are you sure?" Arrika seemed taken aback by his obvious eagerness. "Shouldn't we focus on getting your body restored?"

"Arrika, do you really think I can rest when clues to more unbelievably awesome weapons are even theoretically within my reach? Besides, I already have a clue for restoring my body. Let's go get some leads on our other priority mission."

The way Arrika suddenly sprang out of her chair and jumped into his lap to squeeze him with a girly hug of joy just about salvaged Link's entire miserable day.

**The Royal Hylian Arms Hotel, Hyrule Castle Town, Hyrule Province**

Zelda, stripped out of her ballgown and at ease in her nightclothes, sat back in her room's most comfortable chair and considered a great many things. Although it seemed she'd done nothing else today, there were still more subjects requiring her personal touch, and she split her attentions in many directions to keep up with it all. Chewing on an apple, she sifted through an array of issues with one cycle of her mind, cataloged an extensive to-do list with another, and had her third cycle projected out of her body to aid all three of them in designing a new dress for the upcoming royal presentation ball.

"_What do we think, too frilly?_" the outside cycle asked, spinning around to show off what she'd come up with so far. It was a conservative gown, heavy on the lace, pleats, and petticoats. She was demonstrating its fit in real time by constructing it as she wore it through the magic of astral mutability. A new design was a simple thought away, saving time and giving Zelda the abstract entertainment of playing with the ultimate dress-up doll.

"We're in love, remember?" Zelda spoke around a mouthful of apple, barely able to spare the attention to give that cycle a second opinion. "Plunge the neckline and push out the bust, then tighten it up around the buttocks until you can really see some curves."

"_Right, right, good point. We'll work on tarting it up a bit_." The phantasmal copy proceeded to work on altering the dress from its austere beginnings to something a bit more optimized for forcing a man's undivided attention.

Back in her own skull, Zelda was preoccupied. The part of her mind ruminating over the odds and ends of the day had it the worst.

First of all, there was the meeting with the city's lead merchants during the fireworks viewing to consider. Her foremost frustration had been broaching the subject of trade to begin with, since fully two thirds of the men there were either too drunk to take her questions seriously or found the thought of shop talk with any woman, even their monarch, too distressing to contemplate. When she'd finally gotten her foot in the door, assuring them that she was as up to date on financial matters as any of he ministers, most of what she'd gotten back from them was a lot of hot smoke. Foreign trade was 'needless risky adventuring' with 'return on investments far from guaranteed' and too much threat of 'foreign thieves getting their claws into Castle Town shopkeepers.' Their obscene satisfaction with their own stagnation was enough to turn Zelda's stomach.

For a while, toward the end of that party, she'd been tempted to just erase their vapid little minds and be done with it, then begin rebuilding Hyrule with an army of obedient mouthpieces. It would have been so easy, just so _incredibly_ _easy_. The party had been winding down when a ray of hope had rescued her from planning her new model mind-control economy. The last third of Hyrule's merchant elite, the youngest businessmen with the smallest shops, had discreetly expressed great interest in foreign trade through a scrawled note left under her tea biscuits. It was enough to revitalize Zelda, and to send her mind off on a new line of scheming that was somewhat less cutthroat than transforming them all into her mind-slaves, but honestly, not by very much. However, her new plan _was_ far more morally palatable, and it saved her from herself, so she was determined to make it work.

Reviewing the financial information she had stolen from the minds of Hyrule's top merchants, Zelda recognized an interesting truth. The benefits of the profiteering conspiracy were inequitably distributed to the merchants with the oldest families and best connections. The note she'd received at the party told her that the younger, less connected merchants were fed up with getting confined to the margins without hope of advancement. They recognized the economics of the conspiracy were unsustainable, and they weren't making enough money to keep them happy with the status quo. Outsiders like Malo Jaggleson, boy genius and merchant extraordinaire, had shown them there was another way, and they were eager to break out and settle up with their 'betters' in a contest of talent and fortune, rather than influence and favor-peddling.

With just a few new royal policies, just a tweak here and there to the tax codes, and with a renewed focus on trade, Zelda could use them to break the merchants' conspiracy and get Hyrule's economy back on track. Anyone who failed to innovate with the times would be driven out of business. Some might even wind up penniless, if the true dimensions of this approaching coup were anything like she anticipated. The best part was, no matter who won, it would all serve Zelda's goals. There would be no going back to the old way once these youngsters upset the apple cart, and that suited Zelda just fine.

On another subject entirely, Zelda considered what she'd learned about the changes to her body. That was, honestly, not very much. Further tests, some of which were quite embarrassing, even in the privacy of her own rooms, assured her she was the same person she'd been a few days ago, at least in any way she could measure. Whatever changes had taken place, they had to have been confined to her mind, or to places in her body she had no ready means to observe. Only time would tell what the full effects of the changes were, but for the time being, she could be sure of one thing. Her interest in men as sexual objects had become entirely academic. This didn't seem to change her ability to become embarrassed, flustered, or shamed, but absolutely eliminated feelings of enticement and longing within her.

Idly, Zelda glared at her left hand. Somehow, this had to have something to do with the Triforce. Such a sudden and bizarrely specific change couldn't have any other source. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything she could do about it but stay alert to further changes and hope it didn't influence her behavior too much. Perhaps a younger Zelda would have panicked, but subtle body horror like this was practically becoming normal for her.

"_How are we doing_?" the cycle working on the dress called for her attention again. Zelda turned to look at their progress, and her eyes popped.

"Pssshhh" Zelda sprayed a mouthful of apple across the room as she dissolved into a fit of giggles. "Wh-what is that?" she managed to choke out, still laughing.

"_That bad, huh_?" her phantasmal clone frowned, but couldn't keep herself form quirking a smile. Her alterations to her first unimaginative design had left her in a dress with a plunging v-neck that dipped all the way to the hips, a huge collar that stuck up like a crest a foot above her head, and slits on both sides of the full-length skirt that rose higher than the v-neck plunged. Every time Zelda looked at it, she just started laughing harder. "_We thought it really had that extra 'va-voom,'_"

A few minutes later, when Zelda finally stifled her laughter and calmed down, she managed to give herself a dirty look for the ambush humor. By then, she'd added a great many feathers to the design, plus a huge folding hand fan and a general covering of glitter and tassels in inappropriate places.

"Very funny. We're Hyrule's monarch, not its most expensive and least tasteful professional mistress." Zelda couldn't really get mad, considering it was all her in this conversation, and so just accepted and played along with her own joke. "That said, keep it in mind. You never know when we'll have to attend a racy Caredan costume ball."

"_Oh, good point! But this is a little tame for a Caredan costume ball. Perhaps the same concept with about forty percent less fabric..._" Zelda's projection trailed off. Her pleasant smile faded to an almost terrifyingly neutral mask. The atmosphere in the room became suddenly thick and oppressive. "_What are we doing_?"

Zelda was forced to pause by the sudden change. There was a sense of a brittle bubble around her heart fracturing along thousands of tiny stress lines. Zelda's face fell, and she found herself unable to deflect what was coming.

"Goddessess, we _are_ in a bad place," Zelda agreed. Now that the adrenaline of her laughter had passed, there was a distinct pressure both inside her head and throbbing in her chest. She was choking up, but she could not find any tears. "What's happening to us? We have work to do, we can't just stop to cry over a bunch of crap we can't control."

"_The goddesses stole our sex drive before we even got to use it for anything_," the projection reminded them. "_Did we really think we were just going to shrug that off_?"

"No..." Zelda dropped her half-eaten apple on the floor and bundled herself into a ball by hugging her knees, leaving her sitting in her plush chair in the fetal position. "How much more are we going to change? Will we even recognize ourselv—_shit_!" The unfamiliar curse was hot on her lips. "I'm talking like a madwoman." She glanced at her projection. "Get back in here before we really start cracking up."

"_In or out, we're the same_," the projection, which was actually just one third of Zelda's tripartite mind, felt the need to remind them of this, but still drifted back over and settled into their body.

Zelda absorbed the projection's separate memories and felt no better about the borderline insane moment she'd just had. She sat in that chair for several hours more, not really thinking of much at all, and never managed to cry a single tear. Eventually, she snuffed the lights and made her way to bed. Ready or not, the next day's work wasn't getting any further away, and she would need her rest.

**End Book Two**

Note: Crapaud, the game Tony is losing at in his own Home, is just craps. He's trying to roll to pass. Clearly if he bet on twos or twelves, he'd immediately get a seven. The House always wins.

**Next Chapter: Interlude Two**

Part One: Arrika's Family Reunion Grand Strategy

Part Two: Ninjas and Queens

Part Three: What the Hell is a Divo, Anyway?


End file.
